1. Given the recently released new house building figures for Wales, will the Cabinet Secretary confirm why the number of new homes built in Wales each year is shrinking? 87

We have a long-term positive trend in house building in Wales, and the reality is that the number of new dwellings started in Wales increased by 2 per cent in 2016-17, compared to the previous year, and this is the second highest annual number recorded since the start of the recession in 2007.

Oh dear. [Laughter.] Minister, let's just remind ourselves that, for the latest year, which takes us to September 2017, just gone, the figure is 6,830. That's a drop on the previous year, which was 6,900. But let me remind everyone here: your target is 8,700—8,700. You are nearly 2,000 below that, and it's 10 years since this Government achieved its target for new homes. It is simply not acceptable. You have, and the Government has had for several years, the Holmans report, one of the most authoritative reports ever produced on housing need, which said that this Government should consider adopting the alternative projection that Professor Holmans calculated, which was for 12,000 homes a year in Wales between now and 2030—not 8,700, which you are pitifully missing as a target anyway, but 12,000. Don't you agree with me that it's high time the Welsh Government at least accepted the alternative projection so we can start to make some inroads into the housing crisis?

Well, Welsh Government, as you'll be more than aware, is committed to pursuing all avenues in order to create and build homes, particularly affordable homes, with our target of 20,000 over the course of this Assembly, but also homes for market sale as well. There are a number of ways in which we're doing that. We recognise the important role that the SME sector will play in terms of meeting our housing aspirations, so we've announced recently an additional £30 million for the Wales property development fund, and that will support SME developers to build homes, and that was a sector that we know took a particularly bad hit in the aftermath of the recession. That actually quadruples the initial investment in that particular sector and it's expected to provide over £270 million in support for the sector over the next 15 years.

That's in addition to our commitment to spend £1.4 billion on housing over the course of this Assembly, so there's no doubt that Welsh Government is certainly putting its financial resources behind this and working with all sectors in order to build homes, learning from what we did in the previous Assembly in terms of the housing supply pact we had with Community Housing Cymru. That helped us achieve our target of delivering 10,000 affordable homes. We have a pact, now, with Community Housing Cymru and the Welsh Local Government Association, but also a pact with the Home Builders Federation and the Federation of Master Builders as well, so we're constantly trying to explore how we can work with new partners to increase house building across Wales.

Thank you, Minister. The next question is from Simon Thomas.