Thank you, Llywydd—I didn’t realise I was going to be called. In March of this year the Welsh Government announced it was introducing the Abolition of the Right to Buy and Associated Rights (Wales) Bill. In the months since, there has been an emerging near consensus in broad support for the general principles of the Bill. Too many pundits have closed their ears to practical solutions that do not follow a market-based solution, but, for a new generation of voters, this is simply commonsense ideology. This will be taking control of key utilities that have so badly let them down, or shaping a housing policy that works for people and not markets, and, to ordinary people, they care little about the rationale behind Thatcher’s revolution; they want to know, simply: is it working for me and my family?

So, what is the reality of housing and social housing in Britain and Wales? There is a huge demand out there, a demand that can cause untold heartache, overcrowding, poor mental health, and spoilt childhoods for thousands of families. The Welsh Government alone seem to recognise this and are building new council houses. It is worth noting that the right to buy was not Margaret Thatcher’s idea, nor did it originate with her. What she did was to create, as I pointed out, a dogmatic version that removed any flexibility for policy on the ground—no room for councils to act on the basis of declining stock.

Labour Governments in the 1970s allowed councils to sell off stock, but on a very managed and sustainable basis. The Tories, in my view, could not help themselves in creating the chaos that they always do, which has led to where we are today. This includes former council homes in the hands of hugely wealthy foreign investors in parts of the UK where key workers desperately need them—disenfranchised, those on the list, those watching. What form of dogmatic nonsense would it be to further build only to sell off? As politicians, we have to be controlled by practicalities. In his statement introducing this Bill, Carl Sargeant stated:

‘Our supply of social housing is under considerable pressure. Between 1 April 1981’— as I’ve stated—

‘and 31 March in 2016, 139,000 local authority and housing association homes’—

45 per cent of that stock—

‘were sold under the right to buy’, and these houses were not replaced.

What sort of dogmatic Government would see this and do nothing, based on an outdated ideology of a housing market that has been so exposed as having failed? It is not just, as has been said previously, about that. We all saw the tragedy in Kensington, a borough that cannot provide its residents with adequate housing, but continues to allow whole blocks to be built as investment properties. These empty blocks symbolise where we have gone wrong with housing. The Tories talk today about the importance of family and home, but cynically refuse to answer any practical questions, and waxing lyrical about a supposed panacea of the 1980s while failing to talk about it now. So, how can Welsh families trust a party that would build no council houses, sell off the few we have left, and, more cynically, use housing at a local level as a political football?

Finally, I want to talk of the importance I place on delivering on promises made, and in 2016 we saw a Welsh Labour Government returned by the people of Wales. We stood on the abolition of the right to buy in our manifesto, and I believe we must now deliver.