Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:57 pm on 5 October 2016.
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.