I'd like to focus my contribution on the various work streams that are in the affordable housing supply review document that we received, and I'm going to reflect on some things Mike Hedges said, some things Bethan Sayed said and some things David Melding said. 

First of all, housing need has been talked about, and the need, as Mike Hedges said, that exists below the demand curve means that we aren't, through the market mechanism, delivering those houses. So, it's quite nice to pick up where Mike Hedges left off. We need to build the right homes in the right places. If we leave it to the market mechanism, I don't think that's going to happen. I'll give you an example. There's a housing development in my constituency in Hendredenny that's been approved by the Government to build 260 homes. Of that, in the initial application, 60 of them are affordable, and I don't think that that affordability standard will match anything anybody in the north of my constituency would consider affordable. Of those 60, the number is likely to drop when the houses actually get built. So, if you're going to meet housing demand and housing need through the big house builders, it simply isn't going to happen; there needs to be different things happening. So, building in the south and the north are two very different issues. 

I've long argued that local development plans don't meet housing need at all anyway. I think they are subject to failure, and I think the fact that the Government has introduced this review demonstrates an acceptance of that fact, and also the fact that we're now talking about, as the First Minister said earlier, strategic development plans instead of local development plans. I think it demonstrates that we feel that the market mechanism isn't delivering what we need. Also, the fact that the Welsh Government is consulting on disapplying paragraph 6.2 of TAN 1 demonstrates the fact that we aren't delivering housing through the current model. 

If I could look at work stream 6 in the review paper, which talks about a construction supply chain involving modern methods of construction. Too often, the housing market, as I've said time and again, is dominated by the big four housing developers in Wales, and we aren't then building to need. I've cited the example in Cwm Calon estate in my constituency where the quality of build and the quality of maintenance, the quality of upkeep, is very, very poor. And I turn to an unlikely source to support my view of this cartel, this oligopoly that exists: the 'Independent Review of Build Out Rates' by Oliver Letwin MP. Now, he's no supporter of the market mechanism—and I can see Nick Ramsay nodding: 'Yeah, what a good source.' Well, let me just read to you what he says on page 26 of his report. This is June 2018:

'as I have argued, the major house builders are certainly “land banking”: they proceed on a large site...at a rate designed to protect their profits by constructing and selling homes only at a pace that matches the market’s capacity to absorb those homes at the prices determined by reference to the local...market'.

So, they are not rushing to build.

'The fact that a major house builder holds large amounts of land, is explained by the fact that the major house builders need to maintain a sustainable business...ensuring that they, rather than their competitors, hold as much of the land' as they are able, which will 'minimise market entry'.

What they're doing is holding land to maintain prices and prevent small firms from entering the market. That's classic large firm oligopoly behaviour, and as a socialist it disgusts me.