I want to speak about housing, and I think it's a fairly sobering experience to look at the record going back over the last 20 or 25 years. I don't want to make a particularly partisan speech. I want us to look at how we can forge a new consensus, and, happily, we have a lot of flexibility in improving the planning system, adapting some of our spending, but a lot of what we need to do could come through the cap being lifted on local authorities' borrowing powers and other flexibilities that we'll have. It is very much a capital approach that we need to take, as well as ensuring that we have a more efficient planning system. 

And I also think that, after this afternoon's debate on Brexit, it's appropriate for us to look at something that really goes to the heart of the foundational economy. House building is something surely that can unite us all in terms of its economic worth, the social good that is promoted, the skills that we need to develop for our young people, giving really good jobs and opportunities. And much of the economic activity it generates does stay in local communities. 

Can I first of all say that, should the Cabinet Secretary win the election, the result of which will be announced shortly—? It has taken nine months to get this far, but I think, over the next day or two, we will actually hear the result. But I know that, should he win and accede to the important and high office of First Minister, he would create a Cabinet post of housing Secretary. And I warmly welcome this, because I believe that is really important. And can I urge that it's housing and planning, because I think it's highly dysfunctional at the moment, the way those portfolios are divided? So, that would be a start; there's no doubt about it. That would send a very powerful signal to all our stakeholders out there.

But I do believe that it requires all parties to see the importance anew of housing. After the war, housing and health marched together, really, as the two great social causes. And I think that's the type of priority we need to see housing acquire again, and we will start to rebuild some of the trust, I think, that the younger generation need to have in their political system, because, at the moment, there are key areas where it's not serving them well.

Let me just go through the figures. I must say that the record in England has not been great either; I think that has to be conceded. We've had a real problem in the United Kingdom since the 1990s and the number of homes we are building compared to our historical trend. We are now barely building 6,000 homes a year; a historical trend of between 10,000 and 12,000 in Wales since the second world war. So, we are barely half our historical trend. That's historical trend; that's not what we need to build at the moment. We need to go beyond historical trend, at least for a sustained period, one could argue. The Welsh Government has the evidence. It commissioned an excellent report from the late Professor Holmans, and I think it needs to act on the data that that report produced. The UK Government has had a change of heart, I think, in the type of ambition we need for housing. I don't know whether they've had an equivalent work to that produced by Professor Holmans, but they have set new and more ambitious targets for house building in the 2020s, and that's what I think we should match or even exceed.

I think the challenge of building 100,000 new homes between 2021 and 2031 would be an appropriate and ambitious target for us, in what is likely to be the first Brexit decade. I think it will send also a powerful message to our key partners, the private sector, housing associations and local authorities. We need very flexible working—local authorities to use their borrowing powers, and to work with the private sector and independent sector through housing associations. I think some local councils will start to build at greater scale council houses. I have no problem with that; I think we just need the homes. And it may be that some councils will develop particular specialities and be able to do that for key areas. But I think our key partners in the social sector will be housing associations, and I'd like to see them get even more flexibility, longer term budgets, so they can plan effectively and also drive up through this social building standards, the design quality and create new eco-friendly modular homes. In the 1950s and 1960s, the great improvements in house building were often set by the standards in the social sector, and that's the type of thing that we can see the private sector then emulate, particularly with low-carbon homes, I think.

We need to see a revitalised small and medium-sized enterprise sector and a skills base, working through further education authorities, to allow that. We cannot increase from 6,000 to the 12,000, 13,000, 14,000 that we will need in the next 20 years or so quickly. That's why I think a 10-year target of 100,000 is realistic. It will give us time to, first, recover to historical trend and then, if necessary, go further. And I can say this: if the First Minister makes that sort of pledge—or the new First Minister makes that sort of pledge—I think they will find warm endorsement around this Chamber. It's the sort of pledge we need to give the people of Wales.