Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 4 December 2018.

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Photo of Paul Davies Paul Davies Conservative 1:49, 4 December 2018

Leader of the house, you're not just failing on home building; your anti-aspirational policy to scrap the right to buy has removed a vital rung from the property ladder for many families here in Wales. Even for first-time buyers, very few will actually benefit from your land transaction tax relief policy because the average house price in Wales now is higher than the £180,000 threshold. You have failed to bring into use Wales's 27,000 or more empty homes, 4,057 of which are social homes, and you are failing to unlock the potential of Wales's small and medium-sized construction firms, with just five companies in Wales building 80 per cent of our new homes. Now, yesterday, my colleague David Melding put forward an ambitious plan for home building here in Wales: to see 100,000 homes built over the next 10 years in Wales, to give the housing crisis the priority it needs by creating a Cabinet Secretary for housing and planning, and to scrap the land transaction tax for first-time buyers on properties up to £250,000. Leader of the house, will you now endorse these proposals and work with us to truly reignite house building and home ownership here in Wales?