A number of people have talked about the cost of evicting families from their homes, and just to summarise, moving families out of their homes is a very expensive thing. It costs more than £24 million a year in direct costs, let alone the indirect costs for the health service and the education service. That’s nearly £0.5 million a week that is spent on evicting people, and Plaid Cymru believes that this is a waste of money and that it would be much better to use that money on education. That would be better and more beneficial to everybody—the children, the families and the community generally.

Eighty per cent of the cases arise in the wake of rent arrears, and the background is often poverty, low income, uncertain employment and varying income from week to week, and on top of that, benefits that arrive late and are delayed as the process is delayed, and a lack of order in the welfare system generally. But there is a lack of consistency from area to area. This doesn’t have to happen. I disagree with Jenny Rathbone here; this doesn’t have to happen, particularly at the level that it’s happening at present. I’m pleased to see that there is variation across Wales; not every area is as bad as each other, and I’m pleased to say that Gwynedd and Ceredigion have lower rates than Cardiff and Wrexham, for example, in terms of evictions.

In Gwynedd, the emphasis is on preventative work. There was an anti-poverty partnership, an umbrella body bringing together, four housing associations operating in the area, the county council and Citizens Advice—a partnership that has a focus on anti-poverty and working against the destructive agenda of the Westminster Government in terms of welfare reform. There was a fund that was established, which is a pot of money where it’s possible to give people a discretionary housing payment when they are more likely to face difficulty in terms of paying rent and so forth, and then face eviction possibly from their homes. This pot of money has been established after specific lobbying by the council for additional funds for rural areas, and this is money from Westminster. Good work is happening with the cohort of people who face hardship, and financial help is available to help with housing benefit payments from this fund. But there is also practical help available to people who face debt problems. There’s financial advice available, and putting people on the right track to avoid these problems. Ultimately, of course, there are fewer families who are evicted from their homes, and it is a proper last resort in these progressive areas.

There are good practices in other housing associations across Wales, and what is important is to learn from those good practices. It is possible to avoid evicting people from their homes. Plaid Cymru believes that preventative work is much better, keeping families from being evicted from being evicted from their homes and then in turn avoiding the other outcomes that are related to losing your home for a child, for example avoiding going into the care of social services care, avoiding drug abuse, avoiding mental health problems, and avoiding falling behind at school. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 does put prevention or stopping the exacerbation of problems at the heart of the Assembly’s work, and it’s about time now for this to permeate through to other things that are happening on the ground, and to act on that. I do believe that this area does give a golden opportunity for that to happen—that the emphasis moves to the preventative work and avoiding these problems facing those who are evicted.