Diolch, Llywydd. I am pleased to contribute to today's debate on the general principles of the Regulation of Registered Social Landlords (Wales) Bill on behalf of the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee. Before turning to the substantive issue at hand, I want to place on record my thanks to the sub-committee that was established for its work in gathering evidence as part of the Stage 1 process. In particular, I want to thank Eluned Morgan for chairing the early phase of the sub-committee's work before her appointment to the Welsh Government, to David Melding for representing the Welsh Conservatives during the evidence-gathering process and his thoughtful consideration of that evidence, and put on record the contribution of Steffan Lewis to the work.

Llywydd, the need for this legislation is clear; we don't challenge what the Minister has just said. It's imperative that we reverse the ONS reclassification decision and ensure that registered social landlords are considered private sector bodies for accounting purposes. Furthermore, we recognise the risks to an RSL's capacity to borrow money if reclassification does not take place. However, we are clear in our report that whilst this Bill is properly considered to be in the public interest, it should be considered as a move towards deregulation of the sector—we cannot ignore that fact—and one that will require diligent risk management and effective monitoring by the Welsh Government.

To inform our committee's recommendations and conclusions, we heard from key stakeholders involved in the sector and conducted a public consultation, and our report makes a total of six of the 19 recommendations that the Minister identified. We're very grateful to all those who contributed to our work.

Our first recommendation was a fairly simple one, and that's recommending the acceptance of the general principles of the Bill, because a failure to pass this legislation would mean, according to the Welsh Governments figures, over 5,000 fewer affordable homes during this Assembly term, and that's unacceptable.

Recommendation 2 looked at the issue of local authority influence on RSL boards, and we did hear conflicting messages from the ONS and from the Government as to the status of local councillors who sat as independent members of the board. I'm very pleased to hear the Minister say that she will accept this and clarify the situation in order to ensure that individuals who are there as individuals are not actually placed there as and considered to be representing local authorities.

During our work, we found that the regulatory framework would become even more important in terms of policing RSLs, if and when the legislative changes made by this Bill come into force. Whilst we welcome the review of the regulatory framework and the associated performance standards, we do recommend that the Bill is amended to ensure that the failure to comply with the regulatory framework is explicitly recognised on the face of the Bill as a failure to comply with a requirement under an enactment. I appreciate the Minister has stated that she thinks a regulation approach is best suited to this, but I want to stress that it would add weight if there was a duty to comply with those regulations.

Our fourth recommendation concerns the role of tenants on RSL boards. Whilst we recognise that the Bill is intended to be an absolute minimum of change to satisfy the issues relating to the ONS reclassification, we do believe that there is something of a missed opportunity to strengthen the role of tenants in the governance arrangements of registered social landlords. As a result, we do call upon the Welsh Government to actually do something about it and bring forward amendments to address this. Take the opportunity that this presents you with and strengthen the role of tenants before certain constitutional changes and mergers may be considered.

Turning to the regulation-making powers under section 18 of the Bill, we heard from stakeholders that there were concerns about the breadth of those powers. In oral evidence, the Minister recognised those concerns, but stressed that the powers in the Bill could only be used for consequential amendments. We took the view, in our recommendation 5, that the Welsh Government should clarify that the regulation-making powers in section 18 are to make consequential amendments only, and we welcome the acceptance of this recommendation by the Minister, as she just stated.

Our final and sixth recommendation actually, as the Minister pointed out, is not to the Welsh Government, but to this Assembly. Very often, we debate a Bill on policy, but today we are debating a Bill that has been introduced as a consequence of a decision by the ONS. We therefore need to look at the implications of that Bill upon policy and its delivery. Given the changes that are being brought about by this Bill, we feel we should be guarding against unforeseen and unintended consequences. Therefore, we've recommended that a committee of this Assembly undertakes post-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, should it become an Act. This is not something new, we've done it before with other Bills, and we think the post-legislative scrutiny should look at whether tenants' rights are being properly safeguarded, and should also ensure that land and assets are not being disposed of by RSLs in a way unanticipated by the Welsh Government, in other words, that the concerns we have raised do not come to life. We therefore ask the Welsh Assembly to actually take on that aspect.

Llywydd, to conclude, we believe the National Assembly should support this Bill, but those concerns that we have identified in our report, we believe, need to be addressed. I've heard the Minister's opening remarks, I also hope she has heard our concerns and our desires, not just through our report but through discussion this afternoon, so that the Welsh Government rethinks its position on some of those points and comes forward with amendments to strengthen the Bill, to strengthen the rights of tenants and give them a voice that we think they should have.