The following amendments have been selected: amendments 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

We now move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the Welsh Conservative debate on the right to buy, and I call on David Melding to move the motion—David.

Motion NDM6109 Paul Davies

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes the Welsh Government’s decision to revoke the ‘right to buy’ initiative.

2. Recognises that since 1980, when ‘right to buy’ was introduced in Wales, 130,000 families have been given the opportunity to buy their own council house, and that the people of Wales need to be trusted to make their own decisions on home ownership.

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to recognise that ‘right to buy’ creates a valuable opportunity for people to own their own homes.

4. Believes that the annual target for house building should be at least 14,000 homes a year by 2020, following the recommendations of the Federation of Master Builders in their Programme for Government: 2015 to 2020.

Motion moved.

Deputy Presiding Officer, may I move the motion in the name of Paul Davies? Deputy Presiding Officer, if policies are measured by their take-up, then the right to buy has been one of the most outstanding, successfully delivered policies in, really, I think, the history of British and Welsh politics. [Interruption.] Since 1980, 130,000 families have taken the opportunity to buy their own homes in Wales.

Sadly—and I think we heard immediate indication of this by the mutter from the front bench—the Labour Party has always had a problem with the popularity of right to buy amongst, traditionally, their own supporters, it has to be said, or many of them. I fear that this ideological antipathy is what’s driving current policy choices in the Welsh Government. I think this needs to be addressed and scrutinised very, very effectively.

In the fourth Assembly, Labour halved the discount on right to buy from £16,000 to £8,000. It went up in England to account for rising house prices to, in some places, £75,000. So, there’s a big, big policy shift now in devolution, of course, and we’ve got to live with that. But it is something that’s got to be clearly justified. It did mark, I think, the first real move in force against this very, very popular policy. And now the Welsh Government intends to abolish the right to buy altogether. A very, very sad rejection of one of the most popular policies ever, as I said, in the history of Welsh and British politics.

What I find most reprehensible about all this is that I think it’s done in part to deflect attention from the real challenge, and that, of course, is to build more houses. That is what really should be the central focus, not an ideological distaste for a particularly popular policy that was introduced by a different political party. You should have a wider and more expansive vision by really focusing on what we need, and that’s to build more houses.

It’s not even as if the Labour Party has a great record in terms of affordable homes and their provision. We are way behind the trend and the numbers that were built in the 1990s and, as I will discuss a little later, we’re even seeing that in what at first appeared to be some improvements in the targets for affordable homes. The Welsh Government under Labour, consistently in the era of devolution, has performed very badly in this sector, despite the talk we sometimes hear from Ministers.

Let me turn, then, to housing need. There is, I believe, a very wide consensus that the housing crisis is caused by a lack of supply. Simply, we do not build enough homes. This has led to high prices in the private sector and long waiting lists for social housing. The average house price in Wales is now over six times the average income—a historical high. And 8,000 families in Wales have been on an affordable housing waiting list since before the 2011 election, and a further 2,000 have been on the waiting list since the 2007 elections. This is not a good record, as I have said. This unmet need obviously blights severely the lives of many, many families in Wales, but is also a lost opportunity for the Welsh economy. House building—you know, if Keynes was here, he would say that it is the macro-economic factor from heaven, really, because you can have such a wonderful multiplier when the state backs, through various policies, house building. It is something I think that we need to do. It employs local labour, often local firms, and it is a huge boost to the economy as well as, obviously, to the social circumstances of people. I will give way to Jenny Rathbone.

I just wonder whether you could explain to us why George Osborne wasn’t mindful of this absolutely correct analysis that housing could’ve boosted the economy instead of shoving it all into the banks who then kept it to themselves.

The Conservative Government, and the coalition Government before it, has consistently emphasised that we need to build more houses. We are committed to building—the UK Government, that is, for England—400,000 more affordable houses, which is why I think the Welsh Government finally came forward with their target. Anyway, I just do believe we need more house building, and it’s perhaps for another time to dissect the record of another Government, but here the Government’s record is a poor one.

I’d also say, just in passing, that house repair is often overlooked as a sector. Encouraging more effective policies there and repairing many of the 23,000 empty properties in Wales—that’s over three years-worth of current house building, on the trends we’re on at the moment. A vast number of homes are left empty, many of them because they’re not fit for habitation.

I want to turn now to the actual house building figures, because I think this is an important area that requires detailed scrutiny. In September 2015, the Welsh Government sponsored a report by the late Alan Holmans, and it stated, and I quote, that,

‘if future need and demand for housing in Wales is to be met, there needs to be a return to rates of house building not seen for almost 20 years, and an increase in the rate of growth of affordable housing’.

I commend the Government for commissioning this report. It is an excellent study, and I do urge Members to get a copy from the library and to read it thoroughly.

This would mean, the report stated, an increase from 8,700 new homes a year to 12,000 new homes a year. I don’t criticise the Government if it wants to review the target, but the 8,700 homes target was set 10 years ago or so. It may have been done with due diligence then, but we now know there is a higher need and that we must meet it. So, to change the target wouldn’t be something that I would condemn—I would welcome it if you now accepted a target nearer 12,000, or even more.

We know that, recently, the Welsh Government have committed to an additional—that’s their word—20,000 affordable homes by 2021. However, the First Minister later said in an answer to me that this would leave the annual house building target unchanged at 8,700 homes a year. I’m still mystified by how those two statements run in parallel, as they seem to flatly contradict each other.

Having examined the data, I think that what has actually happened is this: the previous target for affordable homes in the social sector was 3,500. This has now been increased to 4,000 so that we get 20,000 over five years, or an additional 2,500 affordable homes by 2021, not the 20,000 additional homes claimed by the Welsh Government. The figures have been inflated. This implies that the annual house building target has now been increased to 9,200. I welcome any clarification the Minister can make here, but I think that that has to be the logical inference that one must draw. This figure is more than the First Minister thought, but it’s a lot less than the 12,000 needed in Professor Holmans’s projection. Others have argued that the target of 12,000 itself should be exceeded because we need to meet pent-up demand in the system. The Federation of Master Builders has called for a target of 14,000, and that’s something that we endorse as the level that we need to get to by 2020.

The truth is that, however we look at it, we need to build more homes. We can help that process by streamlining the planning system and making it more user-friendly. Now, I think in England they are making great advances here, whereas we are seeing a rather slow approach here to streamlining the system. We need to release more land for building, including an audit, I would say, of land in public possession. And we need to use right-to-buy receipts to provide new social housing. I would say that that was one of the weaknesses at times of the previous policy—I’m quite prepared to concede that. We need to use those receipts for more housing, such is the need for housing. And, in that case, to reuse it for social housing.

Can I finally, Deputy Presiding Officer, refer to the amendments, all made by Plaid Cymru? We reject amendment 1, as it deletes most of our motion. I’m sure that’s not a great surprise to you. We accept amendment 2 and, indeed, its contents I warmly endorse, and that’s why I am so proud to commend the UK Government in strengthening the economy and ensuring that that provides a basis for the sound expansion of the housing sector. We accept amendment 3. There’s no hierarchy here; for many people, social housing is the best option. I’ll simply state that and move on. And we accept amendment 4. This probably only needs a technical solution, but it may need a legislative one to meet the counting anomalies that the Office for National Statistics now seem to have left us with, but we do need to move quickly to clarify the situation. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

Thank you. I have selected the four amendments to the motion, and I call on Bethan Jenkins to move amendments 1 to 4, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. Bethan.

Amendment 1—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Delete all after point 1.

Amendment 2—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add new point at end of motion:

Believes that people are more likely to be able to own their own home if the economy is stronger, employment more secure, and public services actively help people to remain in their homes.

Amendment 3—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add new point at end of motion:

Recognises that home ownership is not the only option, and that social housing should have parity of status with home ownership.

Amendment 4—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add new point at end of motion:

Believes that house building targets could be severely affected by the re-classification of housing association borrowing as public sector debt, and calls on the Welsh Government to take action, including legislation if necessary, to ensure this does not limit the ability of housing associations to finance new home building or home improvements in Wales.

Amendments 1, 2, 3 and 4 moved.

Thank you, and I move the amendments. Home ownership is something many people do aspire to and it is something that is increasingly beyond the reach of many people, through a combination of low wages, insecure employment and a refusal by successive Governments to recognise that house price inflation is just as bad as conventional inflation. But, creating wider home ownership must not be done at the expense of social housing and the safety net that a civilised society should offer.

Beginning with our final amendment, Plaid Cymru is concerned about the decision of the ONS to reclassify housing association debt as public sector debt. Reclassifying housing associations as public non-financial corporations has the potential to limit their ability to encourage investment from a variety of private sources. If housing associations are considered to be public sector bodies, it opens the door for the UK Treasury to place borrowing limits upon them, as they already do with local authorities. This could jeopardise the ability of Welsh housing associations to build new homes and upgrade the quality of existing homes. So, I hope to hear what the Welsh Government has to say on the steps that they will be taking in this regard.

Turning now to the main issue being debated here, it’s quite clear that the right to buy has had an adverse effect on the availability of social housing, hence our extensive amendments to the motion. The right to buy has always made little financial sense, it has instead proved to be a subsidy for the better off and those in the right place at the right time, while reducing the overall social housing stock. The large discounts of between 33 per cent and 50 per cent for residents effectively meant a subsidy for home ownership. This means that for every four homes sold, there have only been two or three homes to replace them. Furthermore, as many lenders refuse mortgages above the sixth floor, tenants in the high rises have been unable to buy, meaning that those who took advantage of the policy were generally those residents of small, low-rise council estates located in areas that subsequently boomed. And we know that many of the high-rise flats that people did not buy have now been knocked to the ground—many in my home town, in Merthyr, in the Gurnos, and also in Hirwaun, close by.

Even ‘The Daily Telegraph’ has conceded that the law was exploited, and many homes were bought by elderly people who were lent the money by their sons and daughters, knowing that they would have large inheritances in a few years’ time. As a result, those homes that were not sold were generally in less-desirable areas, where long-term unemployment followed Tory deindustrialisation. It meant that people became isolated and concentrated in less-desirable estates that gradually became ghettos, and people felt forgotten. Some of those areas did boom—inner-city areas near universities especially eventually had housing stock bought by buy-to-let landlords who converted many properties into houses in multiple occupation to maximise rent. So, while there have been initial boosts in terms of owner-occupiers self-funding improvements, in the long run, those areas have recreated poor housing conditions through an unregulated sector that has often enabled bad landlords to get rich quick.

It also made living in a council house more of a stigma. This is why we have tabled amendment 3, and it’s something in this portfolio I hope to do more work on, because I frankly don’t think that we can just note it and move on. There are still people who feel the stigma of living in a social housing setting that feel that because they can’t afford—[Interruption.] They do. They feel that because they can’t afford to get on the housing ladder that they’re somehow a second-class citizen compared to those who can actually afford it. I think we need a discussion here in this Chamber about the fact that, yes, people will aspire to home ownership, but it’s more for me about the quality of those homes for those people, not specifically about whether they own that house or not.

I think, in general terms, that this Chamber is in danger of becoming stuck in a time warp. Two weeks ago, we heard calls for bringing back grammar schools and now we have a defence of the right to buy. What next—bring back Bananarama? We should be looking to the future instead. [Laughter.] Well, some of you might like Bananarama; perhaps it was just before my time. We should be looking at more innovative solutions to our problems, rather than reaching for yesterday’s clichéd and outdated policies. If we really want to tackle our housing supply problems, then maybe we should look instead at building new eco-homes with the latest environmental technology for use across all housing tenures, and we should properly implement a programme to upgrade the quality of our existing homes to the latest environmental standards.

In looking at other options such as co-operative housing, I know that Canada does this well having been there recently myself, although I wasn’t trying to be on a busman’s holiday. But there are other countries that are doing things well that we can be learning from. While I take David Melding’s point with regard to the importance of empty homes, I think that’s a totally separate debate to the right to buy.

One of the other things I’m passionate about, and I’ll finish on, is that maybe we should be placing limits on the rights of buy-to-let and second-home owners to price our young people out of the housing market, and take most of their wages in artificially high rents. These are issues that I think are more important than bringing back the debate on the right to buy.

Welsh Labour’s intention to abolish the right to buy in Wales would deny the prospect of home ownership to tenants, and miss another opportunity to increase affordable housing supply and tackle the housing supply crisis created by a Labour Government in Wales since 1999.

During the first three Assembly terms, despite warnings, the Labour Welsh Government cut the number of new social homes by 71 per cent as waiting lists mushroomed. By 2009-10, the Welsh Government had by far the lowest proportional level of housing expenditure of any of the four UK nations, and the 2012 UK housing review said it was the Welsh Government itself that gave housing lower priority in its overall budgets.

National House Building Council figures show that although new UK home registrations rose 28 per cent in 2013, Wales was the only part of the UK to see a fall. New homes registered in Wales during 2014 lagged behind Scotland and all nine English regions. At just 6,170, Wales was the only nation in the UK to decrease new homes registered in 2015. There was a further 4 per cent slump in Wales in 2015-16 and a further 25 per cent fall during the first quarter of this financial year.

We heard Professor Holmans’s report for the Welsh Government estimating that Wales needs up to 12,000 new homes annually, including 5,000 in the social sector. Two 2015 reports completed for the house building industry in Wales found that current levels of housing delivery are only just over half of identified housing need across Wales. In September 2015, the Bevan Foundation said that in order to meet anticipated housing need, there needs to be 14,200 new homes created each year, including 5,100 non-market homes. They added that less than half of the requirement is being met, with the biggest shortfall in social housing. So much for social justice from Labour.

This parallels the Federation of Master Builders’ call for an annual house building target of at least 14,000 homes. Despite this, Labour’s annual target averages just 4,000 affordable homes during this Assembly term, and that inflated by adding intermediate rent and low-cost home ownership to social housing. The proposed scrapping of right to buy is a smokescreen and would not do anything to create more homes or increase the number of households with their own front door. As the Welsh Affairs Committee found, cross-party, the suspension of the right to buy would not, in itself, result in an increase in the supply of affordable housing.

By the time Conservatives left Government in 1997, right-to-buy sales in Wales were being replaced on an almost like-for-like basis. The social housing grant under—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, please.

Although I tend to agree with you that it was a very popular initiative, as a direct impact of this policy significant amounts of needed social housing were removed from the sector. This, combined with the necessary instruments not being in place at local authority level, as a direct result of the initiatives that you talked about, has meant that there’s a legacy of waiting lists for council properties. So, do you recognise that there is, indeed, a place for social housing and council housing as part of that suitcase of offer, for those who are in need and on low incomes?

Absolutely. That’s the argument I’ve been putting here for over 13 years.

As the opening paragraph of the October 2014 ‘Homes for All’ manifesto states, ‘There is a housing crisis.’ This crisis has been caused by Labour’s failure to build new affordable homes, not the right to buy, which has been emasculated under Labour and seen sales dwindle from the thousands to just a few hundred each year. Instead, Welsh Conservatives proposed to reform the right to buy, investing the proceeds of council sales in new social housing, thereby increasing housing supply and helping to tackle Labour’s housing supply crisis. This reflects the re-invigorated right-to-buy policy in England, where the UK Government committed to reinvest, for the first time ever, the additional receipts from right-to-buy sales in new affordable rented housing across England as a whole. If a council were to fail to spend the receipts on new affordable rented housing within three years, it would be required to return the unspent money to Government with interest, providing a strong financial incentive for councils to get on with building more homes for local people.

Since 2010, more than twice as much council housing has been built in England than in all of the 13 years combined of the last Labour Government, when English waiting lists nearly doubled as the number of social homes for rent was cut by 421,000. As a council tenant told me,

‘The right to buy scheme offers us the opportunity to plan for a future without requiring state assistance…I urge you to do anything in your power to oppose the proposal to end the Right to Buy in Wales.’

Instead of traipsing out 30-year-old dogma, the Welsh Government should be helping people like this and using every available tool to tackle their housing supply crisis, which they have imposed on Wales.

I agree, absolutely, that we need to build more homes, but you have to recognise that it’s simply not prudent to encourage people to borrow more than two and a half times their combined income in order to buy a home. And, for probably half the population, that simply isn’t possible with the current price of homes. Yes, possibly, home prices could come down if we built more, but at the moment, it’s simply beyond the reach of most people. So, I think it is entirely prudent for us to—

Will you take an intervention?

I’ve only just started.

[Continues.]—entirely prudent for us to suspend the right to buy.

Mrs Thatcher’s right-to-buy initiative didn’t need to be an unmitigated disaster. If the money that people paid to buy their homes had been reinvested in building more homes, it could’ve introduced a choice and a diversity of approach to home management. I do recall the days when you never were allowed to hang out your washing and when you couldn’t paint your door anything other than the colour designated by the housing manager. So, we’ve definitely moved beyond that, but unfortunately, this right to buy was used as an asset-stripping operation by the Treasury, and local authorities were instead forced to use the right-to-buy receipts to pay off their debts. That is why they were not able to build more homes.

In addition to which, because the tenants were given a 50 per cent discount, it meant that the councils were never in a position to replace the homes they’d lost with new ones, because they were clearly going to cost at least half as much again. Even with lower discounts, less than half the right-to-buy properties have been replaced in the last four years according to the National Housing Federation.

Thank you very much for taking the intervention. It was just on your last point there that a 50 per cent discount means that the house is only worth half its original value. Inevitably, the value of a house on sale is going to be more than its building costs, so, while you may have a general point that a discount needn’t be too generous, to equate a building cost with the sale cost is just wrong, I’m sorry.

Well, that’s a complicated story. Obviously, the land costs have to be accounted for, but the point is, if the receipts aren’t sufficient to build another home, then you’re always going to be having a decreasing supply. In the current situation, where we’ve got 90,000 people waiting for a home, it would be reckless of us to not suspend the right to buy in the meantime.

So, although this was hailed as one of the most important social revolutions of the century, instead it has spawned fractured communities, boosted exploitative landlordism and created a severe lack of social housing that has made ‘Cathy Come Home’ a twenty-first century reality again.

Private rented accommodation is so much more expensive that it condemns many families who fall back into private rented accommodation to stop working and become dependent on housing benefit in order to pay the rent. And then, on top of that, families have to move year on year, never able to put down roots and establish a stake in communities. For children, the burden is even higher, moving school every year—or, even worse, in-year—they are bound to do less well academically than if they’d completed their education in one primary school and one secondary school. The alternative is children have to travel very long distances to remain in the same school, impacting on their well-being and more vehicles on the road.

So, after decades of right to buy, and a failure by successive Governments of all stripes—I agree, of all stripes—to address the acute housing shortage, Welsh Labour is absolutely taking the right decision to protect social housing, and I applaud this initiative. It was hailed as one of the most important social revolutions of the century. Instead, 30 years later, it’s fractured communities and made for an enormous amount of disconnect.

Overall, Wales has lost nearly half of its social housing stock—over 90,000 households on the council waiting list, and we can’t afford to lose any more. This disaster has been a slow burn. I agree that, in the 1980s and the 1990s, the numbers living in private rented accommodation were relatively stable, at around 10 per cent of the total, but it’s now almost 20 per cent, and, in the 20 to 39 age groups, it’s jumped to 50 per cent. So, generation rent is not about to disappear any time soon.

If you think that the right to buy has led to the nirvana of a property-owning democracy, think again. Over 40 per cent of those right-to-buy homes—the Tories applaud the ability of people to buy their own home—have actually fallen back into the hands of the private rented sector, where they continue to milk more and more public funds in housing benefit payments. Across the UK, housing benefit has ballooned from £7.5 billion in 1991 to £22 billion 20 years later. We really cannot afford to go on like that. A third of the private rented stock of 4.5 million nationally is part or wholly funded through housing benefit. So, this genius idea of a social revolution has led to an expanded private rented sector in large part subsidised by spiralling rates of housing benefit. It’s not sustainable, and it’s absolutely right that we suspend the right to buy whilst we build more homes.

It was Sir Anthony Eden, who, as Prime Minister in the mid-1950s, had the vision of creating a property-owning democracy in this country. Ever since, for successive Conservative Governments, widening home ownership has been a core principle. For too many of our people, home ownership was only a dream. They wanted to own their own home, but it was beyond their reach. Too many were denied the chance and the opportunity to buy the home in which they lived.

We support home ownership, because it encourages independence, self-reliance and aspiration. It gives people a stake in their communities. Between 1979 and 1997, the Conservative Government widened the opportunity for home ownership. The right to buy was a highly successful part of their programme—2014 marked 34 years of the right-to-buy scheme in England. During this time, over 1,800,000 home sales had been completed under this programme. In Wales, 130,000 families have had the opportunity to buy their own council houses. That’s 130,000 families taking the first step on the property ladder, owning a home that they can pass on to their next generation.

The Labour Party fought the right to buy tooth and nail. It was not part of their philosophy that council tenants should acquire the right and dignity of property ownership, and it still isn’t. Last week, in Liverpool, Mr Corbyn’s shadow housing Minister confirmed that they would suspend the right to buy. In doing so, they’re following the lead of Welsh Labour. The Welsh Government has been steadily undermining the right to buy in Wales. First, they cut the discount available by half, then they suspended the scheme altogether in Carmarthenshire. Now, they intend to abolish the right to buy altogether. The First Minister claimed that its abolition would

‘ensure social housing is available to those who need it, and who are unable to access accommodation through home ownership or the private rented sector.’

Will you take an intervention?

This dogma-driven decision has nothing to do with increasing the supply of social housing. Sorry, Joyce. It has everything to do with shifting the blame for Labour’s total failure, after 17 years in power, to increase the supply of social housing. Actually, Deputy Presiding Officer, in the Newport area they tried to build those houses in the academic, the university campus. Today—only today—they actually allowed, to build social houses, to demolish one iconic church in Newport and to put a few houses. That also needs to be looked at: where the houses are going to be built. That is another area that the Labour Party should be considering: to tell all the councils that listed buildings or iconic buildings should not be disturbed.

The social housing crisis in Wales is a result of Welsh Labour missing building targets. In 2007, when I came here, there was a big project—a big target that you actually put in this Chamber: 25,000 houses, and you never achieved more than—[Interruption.] You never achieved more than 6,000. And, then, in the end, you said that it was only piloted. God help you.

Since 2004, successive Welsh Governments have been warned of an impending crisis unless they stepped up this house building. The previous Government was told by its own housing review that it would have to build at least 14,000 homes per annum until 2026 in order to meet housing demand, as David Melding has already mentioned. The Home Builders Federation states that poor planning and higher costs associated with building homes in Wales have compromised investment. That is another disaster of Labour’s attitude. They say that the more attractive planning and development environment in England means that the volume of permissions has increased by 49 per cent, while it is decreasing in Wales.

There are around 23,000 empty homes in Wales. Some are in need of renovation, yet the previous Welsh Government made only 7,500 empty homes available to re-join the housing stock. Deputy Presiding Officer, we need a new approach for housing in Wales: not one based on the failed left-wing socialist dogma of the 1970s, but one that meets—[Interruption.] One that meets the needs and aspirations of our people—[Interruption.]

Thank you.

[Continues.]—an approach to encourage home ownership.

Thank you. Have you finished?

One that does not take away the ladder of opportunity and kills the hopes and dreams of many families in Wales. I support the motion.

Thank you. Gareth Bennett.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. We in UKIP Wales also note the Welsh Government’s intention to revoke right to buy here in Wales. We also see right to buy as a valuable opportunity for home ownership, and of course we support more house building, if, of course, the houses can be built in the right places. However, although we support the Conservative proposal, we do have several suggestions of our own—[Interruption.] Yes, we do; a few. We do have several suggestions of our own as to how the housing situation could be improved in Wales.

Firstly, we need to address the problem of how to replenish the council housing stock. The problem with the Housing Act 1980 was that it forbade councils from using any of the revenues from council house sales on building new houses. This was the rather disastrous element of the Conservatives’ policy, which would now need to be addressed were right to buy to continue in Wales. Our proposal would be to allow right to buy in Wales, but to ring fence the revenues from council house sales so that 100 per cent of these funds could be ploughed back into building new council houses.

As well as trying to maximise the supply of housing, we also need to take action to control demand for housing. [Interruption.] I don’t have time, Mark, I’m sorry. Thank you. As a nation, the UK misses its targets of building 200,000 homes year after year, while at the same time net migration runs at more than 300,000. Therefore, we need to recognise that mass immigration is a factor in the housing shortage, and we therefore support immigration controls. Hence our campaign for Brexit, which some Members may recall.

The left-wing parties may begin howling at this point that we need migrant workers. [Interruption.] The left-wingers may howl at this point that we need migrant workers, and indeed one of the areas where we have a skills shortage is in the construction industry. The simple answer to this is to guide more Welsh school and college students into apprenticeships in the construction industry. Hence our support for university technical colleges, UTCs, on the Baker Dearing model, as they have in England. These have even been supported by an ex Labour council leader here in south Wales, Jeff Jones, formerly of Bridgend council, who has supported bringing in UTCs in Wales. So, why not?

Finally, on Bethan Jenkins’s point regarding Bananarama, many of us at school did like Bananarama quite a lot, although I confess I can now no longer remember any of their songs.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate this afternoon, and in particular the way David Melding opened the debate, because, obviously, mapping it out, there were two parts to this debate. The first part is obviously the ideological argument, and I appreciate the position that the Government has taken around the right to buy, but it is a fact that it has been most probably one of the biggest social empowerment vehicles that any Government has brought forward. Without a shadow of a doubt, the ability for someone to have a stake in society and own their own property—you cannot empower anyone more than that. I speak as a son of someone who actually benefitted from being able to buy their own home and farm and then progressed to owning their own business—I’ll take the intervention in a minute, Jenny, but let me progress a little, after only 40 seconds. The ability to have that stake in society is something that it is really regrettable that the Government here are actually going to legislate to take away as a right. As Jenny in her contribution talked about, she said it was a suspension. It’s not a suspension. You’re going to actually pass a law to forbid it in this part of the United Kingdom. I think that is a really retrograde step, and really does not do any favours at all to empowering people to move on in life and actually get that stake in society. I will take the intervention.

Do you recognise that, for many people, owning their own home is simply not possible, because they don’t earn enough? Therefore, social housing is a much better option—more stable, more secure than private rented.

I take the point that there is not one silver bullet to solve the housing crisis that we face, just like actually passing legislation to stop the right to buy is not going to be a silver bullet to stop the housing crisis that we face, in that we’re just not building enough houses. And, if you do not build enough houses, you create pent-up demand for that, the house price goes up, and ultimately you are excluding more and more people from that market. Of course, social housing is an important part of the balance that we can use, amongst many of the other tools that are available. That’s why the second part of this motion, as introduced by David, was touching on the need for the Government to actually have a coherent policy about how we are going to get new starts and completions up here in Wales. We were the only part of the United Kingdom where actually house building went backwards last year. New starts actually went backwards. Now, unless the Government can actually stimulate that demand through the planning system and assist house builders, local authorities and, indeed, local communities to work to develop these proposals, then your legislation is just going to fail and create a wider social chasm between the people who have already got their stake in society by owning their own homes and those who are unable to actually get on the housing ladder.

I well remember, when this first announcement was made last year by the Government here, that they would legislate if they were successful in the May election, and the lady from Swansea who did the BBC clip, in her own house that she bought in the 1980s, sitting in her living room and her saying, ‘Who would’ve thought that we would’ve actually owned our own home?’ She said, with great pride, that she now owned her own home. The first thing they did was change the windows in that house. The next thing they did was install central heating. The next thing they did was upgrade the living room. It’s about that sense of being, that sense of purpose, and we make no apologies as Welsh Conservatives about standing full square behind the right to buy being continued in Wales, as it is in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Instead of the Government using its legislative powers to outlaw this practice—. I will take the point that has been made by Jenny and other Labour Members here today that, in some areas, there might be a need to suspend; there might be a need to bring other tools to the table. But to actually outlaw a principle that has been so socially empowering over the last 30 or 35 years is such a retrograde step and really does show the divide now that is opening up. [Interruption.] I welcome that divide, because we will be championing the continuation—I will take the intervention in a minute—of the right to buy here in Wales. I’ll take the intervention.

Do you know what the data—statistics—are around house repossessions for those that have used the right to buy?

There is an issue around house repossessions. There’s an issue about the ability for people to access the housing market more generally. But you can’t use just that piece of data to actually bring a piece of legislation to this Assembly to outlaw a practice that has been so socially empowering. Far better for the Minister to use his time and his resources and the Government’s time to develop a strategy that will see genuine new starts increasing here in Wales, and completing in Wales, so that there’s actually more stock for people to buy and to actually have access to that property market.

By constraining the supply, you’re pushing the demand up and, ultimately, the price of property is going up. Therefore, the disparity between the wage that someone’s taking home and the ability to get the mortgage to access that house is getting wider and wider here in Wales. That is not a situation that is sustainable. To date, successive Labour Governments have not tackled that. You’re at the beginning of your time, Cabinet Secretary; use this debate to map out how you’re going to do it, but I would urge you and ask you to reconsider the use of legislation to outlaw the one socially empowering tool that has generally transformed so many lives here in Wales and, indeed, across the United Kingdom.

Thank you very much. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children—Carl Sargeant.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome today’s debate—the third on housing, I think, in as many weeks. A safe, secure and affordable home is a basic need. It’s crucial to people’s health, well-being and ability to realise their full potential. Housing is a priority for this Government. I’m deeply committed to ensuring we do all we can to help people meet their housing needs and make the real difference that many people have talked about in the Chamber today.

The housing market doesn’t work for everyone, but at the heart of today’s debate, I believe, is fairness—the need to ensure that those who cannot take full advantage of the market can have a stable, affordable home.

Our role as Government is to ensure the housing system works, intervening where necessary to make it work better, particularly for those who are disadvantaged. This is fundamental to our goal of promoting prosperity and social justice. Social housing plays a vital role, and protecting it is one of the best ways in which housing policy can be used to tackle poverty and promote community well-being. Access to decent, low-cost housing increases disposable income and prevents material deprivation. It’s the springboard to employment. Those are not my words, but those of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Social housing provides a solid foundation for people’s lives and thus contributes to health, education and the economic goals, and we mustn’t ever forget it or lose it.

As a result of the policy introduced by the Conservative Government in 1981, we have lost a staggering amount of social housing, more than 138,000 homes—nearly half of our entire social housing stock. Decisive action is required to enable social housing to be made available for those who need it most, and this is what we are doing by way of a Bill to end the right to buy. We will be introducing a Bill. I’m very pleased that the Plaid Cymru benches will be supportive of that proposal as we take it through the Chamber. It’s clear that the opposition parties opposite me aren’t able to support that principle.

At a time when there’s increasing demand for housing, we’re still seeing homes being lost in our housing stock. This means some people, including vulnerable people, have to wait longer for a home or have to rent from the private rented sector. I listened to the contributions made by some of the opposition Members around the right to buy and the ability to retain stock. The facts of the matter are: in England—which they promote—they are selling seven social housing homes and building one replacement. How do the maths stack up?

Andrew R.T. Davies rose—

I will take an intervention from the Member.

I’m grateful to you for taking an intervention, Cabinet Secretary. You said that the stock had been lost. As David, who introduced the debate, said, that was a flaw of the scheme that came in—that the money was not used to replace it. Why do you, therefore, acknowledging that there was that deficit in the original scheme, not just make the scheme more adaptable to what is required in the twenty-first century and actually allow receipts to be used to build more homes, rather than outlawing the scheme—using the law to outlaw something like this?

We’ve got a raft of schemes. The 20,000 model, which I’ll come onto in a second—. I know that David tries to pretend that he doesn’t understand the figures, but I know that the Member is good at this. I will explain them in more detail.

Let me tell you one fundamental fact about the right to buy and what’s actually happened in this sector: the fact is that, as years have passed, the true impact of the right to buy has been seen. Research reveals that a significant proportion of homes sold under the right to buy—more than 40 per cent of those have ended up in the private rented sector, pushing the very rents that the Member suggested were inflating. That’s the very reason why these are unaffordable properties. We must prevent the sale of more social housing and protect social housing stock. [Interruption.] The Member keeps shouting, but these facts are speaking for themselves.

Let’s go to the numbers, which David and his colleagues wish to challenge. I’m grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate our reasoning. The commissioned report that the Member alludes to—again, a very good document—is the Public Policy Institute for Wales’s report, ‘Future Need and Demand for Housing in Wales’, from September 2015. They projected an additional total need of 174,000 homes in the period 2011-31. This would equate to 8,700 per year, of which 5,200—around 60 per cent—will be needed in the market sector, and around 3,500—40 per cent a year—in the social sector, amounting to an additional 70,000 social rented homes over the next 20-year period.

We are clear that our target from last year, which will be—. When the stats are released, I’m confident that we will have made our 10,000 social housing stock in the last term of this Government. The ambitious target of 20,000 now is something that will be contributed by many opportunities and schemes that we’re promoting, but also with the market. Lesley Griffiths and I this morning met the private house builders to talk about planning issues and other aspects of development.

But, let me also remind the Chamber that the majority of the benches opposite, when I was planning Minister, all wrote to me about social housing schemes that they wanted to stop in their communities, so don’t be telling me that we need more houses. You tell me one minute that you want more houses, but you don’t want them near you. [Interruption.]

Let me tell you: we will be legislating on the right to buy in this Chamber—[Interruption.]

Can we just listen to the Minister, please?

[Continues.]—with the support of Plaid Cymru, and we will be the ones who champion house building here in Wales.

Thank you.

Until you’re quiet, I’m not going to call your person to respond to the debate. So, if you can be quiet, I will call Suzy Davies to respond to the debate—Suzy Davies.

I’m very grateful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you to everybody who’s taken part in the debate today. This debate was about supply—much-needed affordable housing supply. I acknowledge and, of course, appreciate that there are different views on this, some based on ideology and some based on experience, but none of the contributions I’ve heard from the other parties today explain why the Welsh Government has not met its housing targets to build enough new homes, including affordable homes, and why scrapping the right to buy will actually resolve that problem. There seems to be no grasp that, if supply and demand were in better balance, with a more stable flow through the system in Wales, then we wouldn’t be facing the kind of local development plans where we’re talking about big mini-villages turning up on the edge of existing communities, or big, big rushes towards big social housing supply instead of mixed housing supply. I don’t hear anything about what happens with the skills gap that we face every time there are peaks in housing demand and troughs in housing demand. We wouldn’t be facing to such a degree the mismatch between people’s housing and their changing housing needs over a lifetime—nor indeed that there would be less upward pressure on house prices within the private sector.

The right to buy now helps local government and RSLs provide the right homes in the right places at different times in people’s lives. And when the discount is realistic, which it hasn’t been in Wales—nor in England, actually, during the period of Labour Government—then some stock can be released into the private sector as part of that ownership and rental mix, but then you recover equity to build the new stock, which we could be building to respond more readily to the peaks and troughs of population.

Whether you need social housing—and I mean social housing, now—all your life or not, you may well need the freedom to move through from your first small property, maybe into a larger family home and perhaps into another property more suitable for the needs arising from age or disability. It’s not just the numbers that David Melding was speaking of, but it’s the mix of housing that needs to change, and that mix of housing is not being supplied at the moment. What social housing should not be is a trap that keeps families in homes too small for them or older people in properties that become too much for them. And that’s what happens when nobody builds new social housing. Andrew R.T. Davies is right: by scrapping this option, it limits people’s options to design their own lives. It is not about social housing or private housing; it is about both and allowing people to make the transition between the two if they want to.

Now, David Melding said that there are over 8,000 people on a waiting list for social housing for several years, and I don’t think the Welsh Government should be proud of that. There’s no social justice there. I don’t know much about Keynes, David, but I do know about developers, having worked with them through the housing booms and a property-based recession for several years.

Would the Member give way?

I’m a bit short on time, so if you could keep it quick. Thanks.

On that point about the number of people waiting for social housing, does that not inform the Member that there is a real problem about people accessing properties within the private sector, and what they want are secure tenancies within social housing sector?

What it informs me of is that the Welsh Government hasn’t made it easy for anyone to build social housing during that time.

Developers like building big housing estates, except when there are downturns in the economy and they are left with a lot of risk. What they like, and especially the smaller sort of developers that we have here in Wales, is the steady work—the sell and build again process that you have in the right-to-buy process, as we’re talking about in the twenty-first century. It’s actually providing certainty to smaller developers.

Bethan Jenkins, you were right; home ownership is desired by many, so why cut off one route that helps them to achieve that? Twenty-first century right to buy is about helping people to buy their own homes, that’s true, but it is not at the expense of social housing. It releases equity to build that new social housing. Your question would be for the councils: why aren’t they using it for that? You cannot use the mistakes of the 1980s to argue against the right to buy now. It’s just not replicated; those mistakes don’t exist in 2016, and I really have to ask who is actually in the time warp on this one.

Mark Isherwood made the point that missing house targets does nothing to alleviate waiting lists. Those waiting lists could be reduced if some individuals leave the social housing sector and move into the private sector, and then councils can build homes for those where there is actually—. It reduces the demand, as well as providing new stock.

Jenny Rathbone, I think you made the point for us a little bit: the right to buy now is not the right to buy of the 1980s; the receipts are effectively old for new—or new for old, I should say. It’s an instruction to councils to use that equity to get building. But, I would agree that the rate of discount must be appropriate to the local market, as it is in England now. What it cannot be is so low that it kills off demand for that.

Mohammad Asghar and Gareth Bennett both referred to the point that the location of new houses is an important consideration. It is. Bethan Jenkins, you talked about the old problems with ghettos, and nobody wants to see that again, but I’m sure you’re pleased that the Customs House has been used as a location for social housing, and that our heritage can sit side by side and are not mutually exclusive, which is obviously the experience that Mohammad Asghar has had in Newport. [Interruption.] Yes, certainly.

Just to finish, Cabinet Secretary, yes, we need secure and affordable homes—can you just build some, then? Thank you.

Okay, thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Object. Thank you. I will defer voting on this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.