Thank you, Llywydd. I want to speak to the amendments, but I also want to outline Plaid Cymru's stance on the Bill. Plaid Cymru has opposed the right to buy for some time, with our members supporting the abolition of the right to buy in motions to Plaid conferences over a period of decades, from the time when the policy was implemented first of all by the Conservative Government. And when we were part of the One Wales coalition, we attempted to implement this policy in accordance with the wishes of our members by trying to secure the legislative powers to do that. Since then, local authorities have been allowed to make an application to suspend the right to buy, and indeed some did that. Authorities controlled by Plaid and some controlled by other parties have taken advantage of this in order to protect their housing stock and to protect the investment made in that housing stock. So, clearly, we will be supporting this Bill today. Indeed, we have participated fully in the scrutiny process, and we believe that this has led to a stronger Bill as a result of that. We've worked with Government on amendments 15 and 16, and we therefore hope that those will be passed today.

In accordance with this stance, we'll be voting in favour of the Bill and against the Conservative amendments, which, in our view, would dilute the policy intentions of the Bill. But I believe it's also fair to say that, although this legislation will be a positive step towards protecting the housing stock, in and of itself it won't be sufficient in many ways. This legislation comes too late to protect the housing stock that's already been lost. We know that there is a huge deficit in terms of social housing, with waiting lists remaining terribly long. Since 1980, only 60,000 new homes were built in the local authority sector or social housing sector. There are 90,000 people on the waiting list at present. Over the past five years, we have built, on average, 950 new homes in the social housing sector under this Government. At this rate, it will take 95 years to build enough homes to tackle the waiting list without anticipating a net change in demand, and that clearly is too long.

And, yes, it’s true that some of those people in social housing may now want to become home owners themselves, but a combination of low wages, uncertainty in terms of unemployment and high housing prices are a barrier, and therefore we need to build more social housing and to provide far greater support for people to become home owners themselves, by support for first-time buyers, for example.

There are some programmes already in the pipeline. There is one being undertaken in my area where you pay a medium rent on your social property and then you have a choice as to whether you purchase that home, but if you then move on to sell that property, you would have to sell it on to people living locally. Means such as this could be important tools in supporting home ownership in areas where average house prices are significantly higher than local salaries, and in parts of Gwynedd, that is certainly the case.

So, protecting our investment by passing this legislation is one small step in the right direction in terms of what needs to be done, and I remember Carl Sargeant himself saying at committee stage that this is only a piece of the jigsaw, and that more needs to be done than simply consenting to this Bill today. So, I very much hope that we won’t see this Bill as a full stop.

A word on the Conservative amendments: all of these amendments lift the suspension of the right to buy in areas where it is already in place. We believe that lifting the suspension, even temporarily, would be damaging, and as part of the suspension period, tenants in those designated areas have already had the opportunity to buy while the suspension was going through the process, so we will be voting against the amendments.