Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:49 pm on 18 July 2017.
It’s true, over the time period involved. Yes, 139,000. In the same—[Interruption.] In the same period, the number of houses or flats that are rented privately has risen by 110,000. So, the market changes and there is a housing crisis for the reason that David Melding pointed out. We have a perfect storm in a sense because we have very significant restrictions on building through the planning legislation, on the one hand, and we know that, with the immigration figures, there’s tremendous pressure on demand, as well as for the reasons of splitting up households and single occupation. There is an increased demand for property, and we know that, despite all the talk of austerity that we constantly hear in this Chamber, the vast increase in the amount of money in circulation through quantitative easing has actually fed largely into asset prices, and there’s been a ripple effect that has worked outwards from London and the south-east. So, if we want to solve the housing problem—and, of course, we all do—then we have to look elsewhere than this measure to achieve that result.
But what I find so extraordinary about this is that this has been a great liberating policy over the years for hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to own their own houses. The fact that they were in council ownership or social housing ownership didn’t mean that they would be moving out to exercise their desire to own their own property and then making their properties available to others who needed them. Properties are locked up for generations, often, by people who live in local authority housing or social housing. That doesn’t in any way mean that you are going to be able to satisfy the social objectives that we all agree about. I was in favour of a property-owning democracy, and I still am, and I’m in favour, as Neil McEvoy pointed out, of aspirational working-class people being able to participate in it.