Labour is utterly failing Wales when it comes to housing. This motion claims that Labour are laying the groundwork for more affordable housing, but you only have to look at what's going on in Cardiff to see how absurd this is. Labour is simply selling out our city. Virtually every patch of greenfield in the west of the city and lots in the east are currently being built on, and these aren't affordable houses built by local companies; these are very expensive houses being built by massive, corporate housing developers. They don't care about our culture, our language or our way of life. Beautiful countryside around Danescourt is about to be lost. Dog walkers and runners won't be able to go there any more if we can't stop the building. We’ve got Regency Park being built; we’ve got the Ledger building going up in the new Central Quay development. Now, they could be anywhere, and they just don’t sound Welsh. Can we at least get a bit of recognition for the fact that Welsh people have lived here for thousands of years?

The houses are not really affordable either. Most first-time buyers would have no chance of finding £283,000 to buy a three-bedroomed house in Pentrebane. My constituents just simply can’t afford that, and they'll have to sit back and watch as wealthier people move in and live in the places where their children used to play in the fields. And you won’t be able to get a doctor’s appointment either—no new surgery places until 3,000 houses are built. Fifteen thousand extra cars on the road—please don’t talk to me about air pollution. No prospect of any decent public transport alternative.

Now, the suggestion and emotion that the Welsh Government is somehow driving housing efficiency is absurd also, because we all remember Labour completely backed down on efficiency targets for new houses, yet you’ve let the big, corporate developers do exactly as they wish. So, here’s some suggestions: do more about the long-term empty properties that blight our communities. Some have been empty for decades—decades—get them back in the market. Employ local people to renovate them. Everybody wins. I really don’t understand why councils don’t do such a very simple thing when it’s so obvious and so beneficial to the local economy. Why are we not developing brownfield sites? There’s such a surplus of employment land in south Wales, and yet these sites just remain there whilst we see the great green spaces being developed.

The new developments should also reflect Wales—Welsh place names for the new developments, and they should be fully bilingual. The houses there should be for local people and not to appeal to some international property markets. Labour have made such a mess of housing. We need local housing for local need so that local people can afford to move in to their communities. We need a policy for housing that’s localist in nature and that reflects the proud history of our country also. Diolch yn fawr.