5. Will the First Minister provide an update on the impact of the Help to Buy—Wales scheme? OAQ52155

Since its launch in 2014, Help to Buy—Wales has helped nearly 6,900 households to buy their new home, with around 75 per cent being first-time buyers. In addition, of course, the scheme is attracting development funding into Wales and providing jobs and opportunities for the Welsh supply chain.

Thank you, First Minister. The value of homes in Newport has grown by 4.7 per cent in the last year, with the average house price now in Newport over £185,000. The Welsh Government's Help to Buy scheme has helped over 1,200 first-time buyers to purchase their homes in Newport, and that's one fifth of all Help to Buy homes purchased in Wales. With the removal of the Severn bridge tolls fast approaching, and people moving from Bristol and Cardiff to Newport, increasing rents and house prices continue to put a real strain on young people and families. Consequently, there's a real risk of young first-time buyers being priced out of the market. What more can the Welsh Government do, with the local authority and social landlords and developers, to ensure property hotspots like Newport are attainable for those who want to get on the housing ladder for the first time?

Help to Buy—Wales is part of that, but other schemes such as Rent to Own are hugely important, and also making sure, of course, that there's sufficient supply of housing in the area. That's not just about building more and more homes—although we have our target of 20,000 homes that we will reach by the end of this Assembly term—but also, of course, bringing more empty homes into use, and Newport, of course, has a good record of doing that. And, of course, it's looking at alternative ways such as shared equity schemes, such as community land trusts, in order to make housing more affordable, and particularly to make sure that the price of housing doesn't go up so fast and so far that the housing then becomes unaffordable. One way of doing that is through shared equity. One way of doing that is through community land trusts, where the land is owned by a landlord and the people who own houses on the land are leaseholders. It helps to control the price of houses. I think all these things can be looked at by house builders, in order to make sure that more and more houses become available.

First Minister, I certainly agree that the Help to Buy scheme has been successful, as it has been in England, and the other demand-side measures that you mentioned—most of them are also in England—have also been helpful, but they're not as powerful as supply-side measures. Can I tell you, now, the latest figures? Since March 2018, just gone, the average house price in Wales is now over £181,000. That's between six and seven times the average income. That's why we have a housing crisis. It's not your fault in particular; it's all of us who have been active in politics for the last 25 to 30 years. We've got to have a complete change, starting on the supply side.

I agree, but I think it's about more than that. The most difficult part of the housing market in the UK is that people have become used, over many, many years, to seeing a house as an asset—as something that potentially could be something where they could see an increase in their financial investment, or something for their children. It doesn't happen everywhere else, in other countries. Quite often, in some countries, renting is seen as the norm and property isn't seen as something you invest in. But it is, in reality, the case that people do invest in houses with the expectation that prices will go up. The question is getting the balance right: prices will go up, but it's making sure they don't go up at an astronomical rate, and that means increasing the supply. He's quite right about that. But it's about making sure that the supply properly matches the demand that's there. There's no point increasing the supply of high-end housing if the market isn't going to help those people who are at the lowest end of the income scale, which is why I've always emphasised the fact that, yes, we need social housing, yes, we need to make sure that there is more good private rented accommodation, yes, we need more houses for purchase, but we also need to look at other ways in which people can get a stake in property without having to buy a house outright, which would be beyond them financially.