No, you're absolutely right, and I think my colleague Mark Isherwood raised that with the Minister earlier, and it's a really important point and I hope the Welsh Government work on that proposal as well, because a lot will see themselves shut out from that.

Well, another operator in Ceredigion said, 'The impact of the 182 rule on my business would mean that I would be unlikely to reach this threshold having reached 22 weeks in 2021, which is a good year, and with 18 weeks booked so far this year, I anticipate maybe a few more weeks, but 26 weeks is unlikely.' On the Llŷn peninsular: 'The building is available 365 days a year, but very few people want to come in the winter, despite us having underfloor heating and wood burners. I consider 2021 to have been a very good year, and in that very good year, I managed to achieve 163 days.'

Someone in Bala, Gwynedd, said, 'We have never achieved this level of occupancy in our five years of trading, with the best year being an average of 152 nights per cottage. The season is short here and winter months are a very hard sell. The failure and closure of our business, and others like us, would be felt far and wide in our rural community. We employ many local trades for maintenance—electricians, plumbers, decorators, gardeners. We spend a small fortune locally each year on cleaning products, spare parts and produce for our welcome baskets.' And these stories go on and on and on.

And just before the Easter recess, I attended a meeting of the cross-party group on tourism, chaired by my colleague Sam Rowlands, and the message to the Welsh Government there was clear too: this is a harebrained scheme that'll only serve to punish tourism businesses, particularly in rural Wales. And I hope the Plaid Cymru Members listen to some of those accounts too. Ceredigion, Llŷn peninsula, Bala, all of those parts of the country are represented by Plaid Senedd Members. People in those industries will notice Plaid's role in that too.

But the sector is not being unreasonable in saying it doesn't want any change. The majority of responses to the Welsh Government's consultation were to raise the occupancy threshold from 70 days to 105 days, in line with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs's threshold between council tax and business rates. This would amount to a 50 per cent rise and was suggested by members of a professional sector that understands booking trends, marketing and customer behaviour. The sector is willing to meet the Government in the middle here, but the Government is simply unwilling to listen.

The other big threat on the horizon from the Welsh Government is the proposed introduction of a tourism tax. We know that this is a Welsh Government that likes to take its ultra-left-wing policy ideas straight from the middle pages of the Morning Star, but this is quite something else. This proposal is totally regressive and it'll impede the very businesses that we should be supporting to come out of the other side of the last couple of years.

I've raised, as have my colleagues, our party's opposition to this tax on numerous occasions in this Chamber and we're always met with the same old tired response from Welsh Government that other countries across the world have implemented this tax, without taking into account any specifically Welsh factors at all. So, they say that the introduction of a tourism tax would have no impact at all on visitor numbers to some of our key tourism locations in Wales. But I thought Ministers might be keen to hear the latest from Venice, one of the world's leading tourism destinations, that has now said it's introducing a tourism tax to dissuade further visitors from attending. Yes, you heard that right; it turns out that extra taxes for visitors mean fewer people want to visit. We also know that, from my questioning of both the First Minister and the finance Minister, there is no assurance at all that such a tax will lead to any additional money being spent on improving tourism offers in these areas. The Government either cannot or will not be able to prevent councils from deleting existing tourism budgets and replacing them with this tax instead.

So, what do we really know about the Government's two proposals here? They'll lead to fewer places to stay, small businesses going out of business, fewer visitors overall and no more money being spent on tourism. I'm shocked they didn't put that on the front page of the manifesto. But the Welsh Government still has time to change course here. Businesses are willing to work with you and meet you in the middle, but they need a Government that is on the side of the tourism sector. What they don't need is a Government looking for a roundabout way to raise more taxes to pay for more politicians in this place. Thank you.