SIR,

Once again, the Welsh public has been let down by those in power.

The imposition of what is essentially a tax on shopping bags, albeit the proceeds have to go to charitable organisations as the Welsh Assembly has no tax raising powers, has been wrongly thought through.

Many years ago the supermarkets introduced plastic bags and allowed us to take as many as we wanted.

This is by far the largest part of the problem and legislation to curtail this was long overdue.

However, the Welsh Assembly decided to include all bags under the name of 'single use carrier bags', including paper bags that could have been introduced by supermarkets to replace the plastic ones.

Whatever the argument, paper bags are bio-degradable and didn't need to be included.

Finally, the most glaring mistake made is in the need for shops to account for the revenue from their sales of single use carrier bags, which is not likely to be very much.

If the predicted likely reduction is forecast to be 90 per cent then shouldn't the shops be required to account for their cost savings from the provision of bags and hand this over to good causes as well?

Roland Ward

(Raglan)