Thank you, Minister. Plaid Cymru has campaigned for years to ban single-use plastics. I first called for a ban in 2019. This is an important step forward, and something that is very much to be welcomed. Because plastics have become an intrinsic part of our lives—from food packaging, our clothes, the way that people clean, the things that we eat, plastic is everywhere. I read this week that microplastics have been detected in breast milk for the first time. And although we are all aware of plastic pollution, COVID-19 has accelerated microplastics’ harmful impact on our environment and biodiversity. I'm sure that we all remember the distressing images of birds and other animals entangled in single-use face masks, and their stomachs full of plastic. Some will remember that plastics have been found in the depths of the sea, on top of Everest, on beaches in Indonesia and on riverbanks worldwide. These are the earth’s wonders, and this the mark that we leave as humanity—or could we leave another mark via this kind of legislation?

We see the impact of plastics on our own nation’s beautiful coastline. Microplastics are to be found in many of our indigenous aquatic species. The data demonstrate that, despite the campaigns against single-use plastics, the percentage of the plastic and polystyrene covered by the Bill continues to be high on our beaches and in our seas.

Almost everyone agrees that action is needed. But almost nobody wants their lifestyles to change at all, and that's the challenge, of course. We have a duty to safeguard people worldwide from the dangers of plastic waste, and it is clear that, although this Bill is an important step forward, and I do want to repeat that—it is an important step forward—it still isn’t sufficiently robust in terms of banning the manufacture of single-use plastics, as the Chair of the climate change committee has set out.

I am concerned that, in contrast to legislation recently passed in Scotland, Wales is banning only the supply rather than the manufacture of the listed items. We should be preventing the exportation of known pollutants to other countries too. The current definition of 'single use' could allow the supply of multipack or family-size products that include a number of individually packaged items as part of the product. It is particularly important to ensure that this definition is clear, without loopholes. Therefore, I’d like to hear at the end of the debate whether the Minister agrees that the definition of a single-use item should be amended to include the wording ‘conceived as single use’ to reflect the EU’s definition of single-use plastic products.

The committee has discussed in detail—again, this has already been described in the debate—the fact that wet wipes—I think that Llyr calls them 'wipes gwlyb'—are missing from the Bill. In its response to the previous committee’s inquiry into microplastics, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water noted the scale of the problems caused by wet wipes in our sewers. If they're not banned, what more can the Government do and what more can society do to inform people of the damage that wet wipes cause?

Wales Environment Link, as we've heard, argues that citizen education should be of assistance, but, ultimately, regulatory intervention is needed in this field, because as we've heard so many times in the Siambr and in committee, behaviour change is such a difficult thing to bring about. At present, there is nothing to stop companies from labelling as 'flushable' those wipes that cause significant damage to our water systems, and without a standard definition of what is biodegradable, this is a cause of public confusion.

To conclude, Llywydd, this Bill needs to drive change. All of our behaviours must change, and we need to ensure that this is true not just of our day-to-day lives in Wales, but also in terms of the impact that we have on the rest of the world. And that’s the challenge for the Government, of course: ensuring that people’s habits really do change, that they feel that they are part of this, that it's not something that happens to them, but that they want to solve the problem themselves, and that we don’t kick the can down the road for future generations. The work that has gone into this Bill is to be praised to the hilt, and I hope that a number of these concerns can be allayed as the legislation progresses. Thank you.