I feel I ought to start in a more generous spirit than I did last week, because we often clash on housing matters. So, let me just welcome some of the tone of this statement and such phrases as: 'I want to work with them to build at scale and pace'—that's the various people building houses; 'We believe that home ownership is not just for people on higher incomes'—well, that's why I defended the right to buy, although the Minister can coherently hold to this principle as well, I'm not denying that, even though we would disagree; 'The focus will now be on improving the supply of homes across all local authority areas in Wales'; and 'I want to lay the groundwork for the prospect'—'prospect' is a bit weak, but anyway—'of setting even more stretching targets in the future'. So, some of the tone has improved, but I fear now I have to go back to type and just remind people of our current situation, and I'll try, also, to compare it to that of England, which is also in a housing crisis. I've always been balanced in my remarks, and I don't think the Welsh Government has invented the sort of housing market that we're currently in, but it's just its level of response and the projections that it has come out with for housing need that I have particular problems with. If we don't have the correct targets to aim for, we're not going to meet the justified aspirations of so many people, especially younger people and people forming families.

If I look at the house building stats, the current projections, which are accepted by the Welsh Government, are that we need 8,700 homes each year—8,700. That's 5,200 market, 3,500 social. In fairness, the Welsh Government now has a target of 4,000 social each year—or 'roughly affordable' is a more general description. The alternative Holmans projection produced in 2015 estimated that the following was needed each year: 7,000 market, 5,000 social. That gives you 12,000 as a target. It couldn't be achieved instantly, but it's something that you would have to work up to. If the alternative projection is more accurate—and I think there is a high level of academic opinion, anyway, that it is—we will be short of 66,000 homes by 2031, and I'm taking 2031 as a reasonable period of time now in which to look at our deeper housing strategy. That is a real concern, and I do hope your review is going to look at these projections seriously and come up with a serious response, which the Welsh Government has never done. It has never responded officially to Professor Holmans's projection and said why it doesn't agree with him. It just has ignored it, it has made no attempt to refute it.

Now, look at England: the UK Government wants to build 300,000 homes each year in England by the mid-2020s. That equates, or would equate if we had the same target by the mid-2020s, to 15,000 homes each year in Wales. It is a massively different scale, and I think, when you're setting the strategy in these fundamental reviews, you've got to talk this language and tell us where you want to set your targets, what is your pace or whatever—scale and pace, to use the words in your own statement.

Let me just tell you what we are doing at the moment. In 2017, we built 6,885 new dwellings. The last time we reached the Welsh Government's target of 8,700 was in 2008. That's the scale of the current crisis. Now, I don't completely blame the Government for this, there are wider factors, but target setting is really, really important.

Can I just come to a couple of focused questions? What is the Minister's latest estimate of the number of affordable homes that we are building in Wales each year? We're now two years through this five-year Assembly and I want to know if we're anywhere close to the scale and, therefore, the pace to meet the 20,000 target, because by my calculations—the data is not very complete and we await more releases, obviously—there are grounds for being concerned. By the time of your affordable housing supply review report, and that's set to be completed by April 2019, we will be over halfway through the Assembly's term. It'll be too late then to be told that these targets are no longer realistic or that we need more ambitious targets. I think we need to know what your ambition is now. In particular, why is the review, in terms of its terms of reference, not even looking at housing need? The current projections are not being met, of course, as I've outlined, but they're not high enough anyway, even if we could meet them, but there's nothing in the terms of reference that I can work out—of course, we've not had the opportunity of closely scrutinising you on this—that they will be really looking at projections. It's only on the best evidence and projections that we can base housing policy and strategy for the future. Thank you.