I want to look at the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 and the changes required. David Melding has referred to this legislation already. Certainly, the 2014 legislation includes many positives. For example, it extended the time that individuals can approach local authorities when they are at threat of becoming homeless, from 28 days to 56 days, and it also placed a duty on local authorities to prevent all cases of homelessness. But, as ever, the implementation has proved difficult. Just this week, we heard from the audit office, who came to this conclusion: local authorities are succeeding, to various extents, in responding to these problems caused by homelessness, but there is little focus on preventing the fundamental causes of homelessness. Seventeen of the 22 local authorities said that they found difficulty in transitioning to the new system and were failing to provide training and skills to the staff on this new system. The audit office also came to the conclusion that successful steps by local authorities to prevent homelessness had reduced.

Now, I’m highly aware of specific problems in Bangor, in my own constituency, for example, where an increasing number are sleeping rough—on the mountain, very often. There are steps afoot to find solutions to this increasing problem, and I will be attending a meeting with all appropriate agencies—including local councillors, the local authority, the health board and the third sector—over the next few weeks, to try to seek a solution to that particular situation.

Implementing the Act is one thing, but there are fundamental problems with the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 in terms of its intentions, for example the test in terms of priority need and intentional homelessness. Under this Act, those tests have to be undertaken in terms of assessing whether local authorities have a duty to provide housing to individuals, and the Pereira test, which is unfair, was retained in order to test or prove vulnerability. Not only was it retained in the 2014 Act, it was placed on the face of the legislation, and that means that Wales is the only country in the UK that continues with this status, in which one has to prove that an individual is vulnerable, rather than going through the usual tests for homelessness. So, in reality, one could argue that legislation since 2014 has been regressive. Certainly, these tests aren’t in keeping with the housing first policy that Bethan mentioned.

To make things worse, things didn’t have to be this way, because there was a White Paper in 2012, which came before the legislation, that proposed scrapping these tests. Following what was in the White Paper would have been in keeping with the housing first policy. But, for some reason, the Welsh Government decided not to go down that particular route. If that alternative system had been put in place, rather than rough-sleeping, any homeless individual since 2014 could have sought appropriate temporary accommodation, where there would have been an opportunity to avoid the problems that come with regular rough-sleeping, and long-term solutions could have been found.

Scotland has been taking the most progressive stance in this area. In Scotland, local authorities no longer have to go through those tests that I mentioned earlier, and the 2012 Act in Scotland gives anyone who becomes homeless unintentionally the right to stable accommodation. Therefore, it is clear that we are a long way from where we need to be if we are to tackle homelessness and to truly tackle the issue with real intent and purpose.

I know that the equality committee will be carrying out an inquiry into rough-sleeping, and I very much look forward to participating in that inquiry. We need to move swiftly towards the principles of the housing first policy. Announcing 10-year plans in the media is no way forward at all. Perhaps the hope is that, in making those announcements and publications, no-one would notice that we are almost at the end of the previous 10-year plan. That simply isn’t good enough and I do hope that we can make progress from where we are today to find long-term solutions to this ongoing problem. Thank you.