It’s a pleasure to follow two combative speakers in comparison with which I can be made to look moderate and consensual. [Laughter.] It’s a curiously retrogressive Bill, this, because one of the policies that made Labour unelectable in the 1980s was its determined opposition to the introduction of the right to buy. Of course, the numbers are very different now so possibly it may not have quite the same toxic effect on the Labour Party as their attitude did then. Also, I have a curious sense of déjà vu, because I had a part in persuading the Thatcher Government to include housing associations in the housing Bill of 1979, which gave to housing association tenants the same rights that were proposed for council tenants, and, for the same reasons as David Melding has outlined, a very good thing it was too in increasing the diversity of ownership in estates.

This is an ideological Bill because it’s always seemed rather absurd to me, in terms of social policy, that a Government should subsidise the bricks and mortar rather than those who need help with being able to afford a roof over their head. It’s, of course, an extremely expensive way for catering for a social need, actually to build houses as opposed to provide people with the means of paying rent.

The figures are unambiguous that this Bill is totally irrelevant to the solution to the housing crisis that we have in Wales. Just look at the figures. Local authorities sold under the right-to-buy provisions last year only 141 houses. Registered social landlords sold 133 under the right-to-acquire legislation; they sold voluntarily 299. So, the total number of houses in local authority ownership and RSL ownership that were sold under the right-to-buy legislation was only 274 in a housing stock of 1.4 million houses in the whole of Wales. So, clearly, this has no significance at all beyond an ideological one for the Labour Party, now reverting to type after 20 or 30 years. If we look at the stock figures, this is quite dramatic. Local authorities currently own 87,000 properties for rent. RSLs own 137,000. There are privately-rented houses in Wales—202,000. Owner occupation—nearly 1 million. And what we’re talking about here is 274 houses or flats that have been sold under the right-to-buy legislation in a year.