I'm happy to support this legislative proposal, although I should explain that I'm approaching it from a slightly different angle to the Member that moved the motion.

I will talk of my experience as a journalist back 20 years ago. I recall during that time, early in my career, in the 1990s, perhaps, there was a great deal of coverage in the Welsh media, in news and so on, as to what was happening within the tourism industry. Jonathan Jones was chief executive of the Wales Tourist Board. He was a very prominent public figure who spoke publicly very regularly on very technical elements of how to drive the tourism industry forward. I will declare an interest here. I don't think I have to declare an interest on my wife's former profession, but at one time she worked for the Wales Tourist Board.

I'm not saying that the tourist board did everything perfectly, but it was a body that was outward facing, public facing, and understood the industry. I remember what happened following the bonfire of the quangos: tourism in Wales disappeared from the public agenda in Wales. I recall asking, where I would have asked for an interview with the chief executive of the Wales Tourist Board, we had to go through the Government and ask for an interview with the Minister who had responsibility for tourism, and on a technical tourism issue, the Minister often didn't want to speak. It wasn't a particularly political issue; it wasn't a huge political priority. But there was something lost there, I think, in terms of expertise and discussion and conversation between tourism managers in Wales, the public in Wales, and communities in Wales, and I think that that is something that has been lost.

I would see great benefit in having a body that has a very specific function of developing tourism in Wales, and could do so in collaboration with communities in Wales. I'm not critical of the civil servants involved with tourism within the Welsh Government at the moment, but there is benefit in having a cohort of people who develop expertise over a period of years and can innovate.

One of the things that I would want this new body to do is to work more closely with communities. Tourism, in my constituency as much as any other, can be a strong economic tool, it can be a force for good, but tourism done in a way that isn't sensitive to the needs, aspirations and values of a community can be extremely damaging. We in Ynys Môn would want to see the development of a far closer conversation between the industry and the communities, and that is something that this new body could do whilst developing that expertise to innovate in tourism for the benefit of our communities.