Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, for calling me to speak in this very important debate. And thanks very much to Plaid Cymru for raising these important issues, because I do believe that there is a lot of cross-party consensus on these particular issues. I'm very pleased to support the amendment in the name of Julie James, which does call on the Welsh Government to consider abolishing priority need, and also to move towards a comprehensive approach to ending homelessness, which includes a housing first policy. So, I think there is a great deal of consensus, really, about the way that we should actually be going.

I think we should commend the Welsh Government on its efforts to tackle homelessness in the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, because I think it has made a difference. We've obviously got the audit report now to look at in detail to see what the actual effects are, but I think, in some local authorities, there have been real concrete results in being able to get in there early and work to prevent homelessness. 

I also welcome the fact that the Government has protected the Supporting People grant, because as we all know and as we have referred to in this debate, people who are homeless do have complex needs, which cover much more than just having a roof over their heads, but you have to start off with a roof, which is why we would want to support the housing first policy. I also welcome the extra £2.6 million, which will help to tackle rough-sleeping, youth homelessness and mental health and homelessness, as well as increasing capital funding for emergency night provision capacity for Cardiff, Newport, Wrexham and Swansea.

However, I think it is very important that we do debate what is appropriate emergency provision, and Leanne covered this in her speech. Certainly in Cardiff, there appears to have been a big increase in street homelessness. But Lynda Thorne, the cabinet member for housing in Cardiff council, on 29 December, sent out a message that 60 places were available for rough-sleepers on one particular night and only six were taken. So, I think what this does illustrate are the reasons why many people who are sleeping rough do feel unable to take up places in shelters and in emergency accommodation, because of fears of substance misuse, I think. Leanne mentioned the issue about animals and, if you're with a partner, what sort of accommodation is offered. I think there are a huge number of reasons why people sometimes feel unable to take up the opportunity of a shelter. So, I really think that we do need a debate on how we provide appropriate accommodation for all those people who are on the street.

To move on to the priority list and those people who are classed as being a priority need, obviously this includes people who have dependent children, pregnant women, older people, disabled people, 16 and 17-year-olds, 18 to 21-year-old care leavers and many others. I also want to mention the issue of prisoners, which John Griffiths mentioned in his speech, because ex-prisoners with a local connection to the area and who are vulnerable as a result of being an ex-prisoner are the criteria for ex-prisoners. Of course, during the last Assembly term, we did actually change this and I think it is really a matter of great concern that there appears to have been a bad outcome for prisoners as a result of not being automatically a priority need. I'm sure many of us saw the Estyn report into Swansea prison, which was published a couple of weeks ago, which found that half of the prisoners being released are not being sent to sustainable accommodation. The report says that, in their judgment, the outcomes for prisoners in the area of resettlement have sunk to 'poor', which is the lowest possible, and it did say that the Welsh Assembly's policy of not giving priority on housing lists to prisoners on release may have contributed to this result.

So, I think it's really important that we do look again at the issue of prisoners. I don't know if the Government has got any research that it has done itself that shows that efforts to rehouse prisoners, although they're not a priority in the way they were, have resulted in some success, but certainly the evidence appears to be that this has not been a successful change in policy. So, I would ask the Government if it would look at that again, and I think that we should move to a situation where we are looking for housing first and that we should not have priority categories any more.