Group 1. Removal of existing suspension of the right to buy (Amendments 5, 14, 9, 11, 1, 3)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:02 pm on 28 November 2017.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 5:02, 28 November 2017

A suspension—well, as David's just saying, a suspension is not the same as an abolition, and the people who live in those areas now will know that they have no further chance ever of being able to buy their home. All we're asking is that they are treated the same as the people in Pembrokeshire or the people in Ceredigion, and they have that year of grace. If they buy their house, they buy their house; if they don't buy the house, they don't buy it, and then we go on from that and everybody is treated the same.

But this place always goes on and on and on about equality, and we say that equality is one of the underpinning principles of the Assembly, but, today, we're about to make an unequal bit of law that says, 'If you happen to be a tenant in some of our local authorities, you've got a year to save up the money, get a mortgage and buy your home, but, tell you what, if you live in Carmarthenshire or the other five, tough luck, you've lost your opportunity.' I think that is fundamentally unfair. I'm asking you, Minister, because we are building our business, our parliament under different principles—equality underpins everything we say that we want to do—but this is not fair. If you're going to abolish it, abolish it, but abolish it equally for everybody, and let those six authorities have that extra year's grace for the handful of people who might wish to buy their homes.