Whatever we have or haven't done in the past, I think this report provides us with an excellent framework for getting on with doing the things we need to do now. I think in particular I'd like to argue that the innovative housing programme started by Carl Sargeant is a model for achieving all three of the report's priorities for good-quality jobs and the skills to do them, better public services and strengthening local communities.

So, on Friday in Merthyr I had an interesting conversation with the chief executive of Bron Afon housing, who was telling me about the scheme that he was working on with young, single people in Torfaen to design the shared housing that they're going to need as a result of housing benefit no longer paying for people to have individual homes. This is something that students in my constituency have—they have shared housing all over the place—but it is a complete change of culture for people who haven't had the experience of going to university away from home. But this isn't a requirement just for people in Torfaen. It's of course going to be a need for people across Wales to have different types of housing that are going to fit in with the changing landscape in benefits.

I was very interested to hear that this particular project was one of the 46 projects that was awarded money by Carl Sargeant, because I think it's a really exciting example of what we can do, and also what we need to do. Because the housing market is broken and we need to fix it. Therefore, if we're going to intervene in an economy, this is a great opportunity to fix that market. In the past we've had fiscal policies that encouraged people to see houses as investments rather than homes, to the point where the majority of citizens, including those in the Valleys, are unable to afford to buy. Unless we have a very different landscape in the future, they're never going to be able to do so.

In addition, we've got the perfect storm of the sale of council housing that has led to the levels of homelessness and overcrowding that we see across our communities, and we have the private housing sector, which has pursued profits to the exclusion of any commitment to providing value for money, and has delivered the grotesque spectre of Persimmon awarding its senior managers millions of pounds for doing no additional work. So, I think that we should use the innovative housing programme and really seize on the opportunities it creates.

We pick up also on the Farmer report, which is called 'Modernise or Die', which highlights the fact that, in the construction industry workforce, 25 per cent of them are going to be retiring in the next few years and they simply won't be there, and this capacity shrinkage would render the construction industry incapable of delivering the social and physical infrastructure that we need, unless we do something about developing the new skills that are going to be required. 

We've consistently seen underinvestment in training and development by the housing industry sector, and it is entirely new skills that are required with the sort of innovative housing we now need, fit for the twenty-first century, not the same old, same old that we've been producing in the past. So, just as the Valleys has an unwarranted image problem that we need to challenge—the marvellous topography, the clean air, the historic architecture that hasn't suffered the wholesale slaughter of Victorian and Edwardian homes and other buildings, as suffered by much of Cardiff, and these are things that we can seriously build on—so too the construction industry needs to change its image.

It isn't any longer a requirement that you need to have a macho level of physical development. You need to have honed precision skills to develop the consistency that is going to go with the prefabrication of much of the housing sector in fabrication barns, and only the end work is going to be done on site. So, people don't any longer have to work outdoors in all weathers, we can design our housing to fit all those needs. So, I think that this is a great opportunity, and I hope that this is one of the things that the Cabinet Secretary will grasp and see this as a centre of excellence, not just for housing throughout Wales but also to export it to other parts of the United Kingdom and further afield.