Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:36 pm on 18 July 2017.
Okay. Well, I accept that, now, with the reduction in the discount, that is less. But the fact is that social housing organisations are telling us that they are very reluctant to build new social housing if they think it’s then going to be used to exercise the right to buy, and that is what is holding them back. We need to give them that certainty that that is not what is going to happen. If the situation changes and there’s a huge amount more money coming into local authorities to build social housing, then we can completely revisit this but, at the moment, it isn’t possible to do this and we absolutely have to build more homes of all types, and therefore I think this measure is entirely appropriate.