We now have questions from party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, David Melding.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Minister, it's nearly a year since the finance Secretary announced his changes to land transaction tax, moving the standard threshold for payment from £150,000 to £180,000. What assessment has your department made of the likely effect this will have on first-time buyers in Wales? 

Thank you very much for the question, and, of course, the decision around the land transaction tax means that around 80 per cent of first-time buyers in Wales won't pay tax, with our threshold of £180,000. This, of course, is the same proportion of first-time buyers as in England with their stamp duty land tax. Currently, the average house price here in Wales is £140,000, so I think it is incorrect and unfair to suggest in the Conservative Party's White Paper, released this week, that there is no relief for first-time buyers, because that is misleading—around 80 per cent of first-time buyers are protected from that. 

Well, Minister, when this policy was introduced, it diverged from the option that they took in England. There, first-time buyers have a relief of up to £300,000, and, on properties that are priced at that level, there is no stamp duty at all. You quote the average house price—I thought you said £140,000; I think that is not accurate. The average price, I think, at the moment is £180,000 or thereabouts, and that is a significant amount. For properties then between £180,000 and £250,000, which is where the average price in many local authorities now is, first-time buyers will not get full relief; they'll get a margin of that on the £180,000, but they will not get the same deal that those buyers would get in England.

Let me just spell out what that means. In Cardiff, it means our first-time buyers, compared to the equivalent in England, pay £1,700 more in tax. In Monmouthshire, they pay £5,400 more in tax, and, even in Anglesey, first-time buyers there are paying more than £1,000 in tax in addition to what they would pay if they were in England. Do you think it's fair that our first-time buyers in Wales do not get as good a deal as they get in England?

Well, the Office for Budget Responsibility's assessment of the first-time buyers' relief was that it would do little to help first-time buyers, and it would increase house prices and result in very few additional first-time buyer purchases. So, we don't want to replicate a relief that's not deemed to be effective. And, in fact, our approach is much more fair in Wales, because our approach is keen to assist all of those who struggle to buy a house to do so. So, you don't have to be a first-time buyer to benefit from our land transaction tax relief here in Wales. And, actually, I think that's a fair thing to do. People struggle to buy their second house, people struggle to move, and I think our approach has been to help people who are struggling, rather than first-time buyers as an entire group.

Well, relief is either helpful, or it isn't, so I think you need to make your mind up on that. And I wouldn't like to go out into the streets of Cardiff, or go to Monmouth or Anglesey, and tell the first-time buyers there, paying well over the odds of what they would pay if they were in England, that this extra tax is neither here nor there. I think that is a really bad message. The other thing, where I do agree, is that we do need a broader range of policies, and the building rate is the key thing, really, in terms of providing a better market and a more competitive market for our first-time buyers. So, how do you think the lowest building rate on record almost is helping first-time buyers in Wales?

Well, clearly, Welsh Government is committed to increasing the scale and pace of building, and one of our commitments in 'Prosperity for All' was to work very closely with local authorities to do that. And we're able to do that now as a result of the raise in—or the scrapping of the borrowing limit, which, of course, Welsh Government has been campaigning for for some time. We're well on course to meet our target of 20,000 new affordable homes being built through the course of this Assembly, and today you'll have noticed that we've published 'Planning Policy Wales', which clearly takes us forward, in terms of breaking down some of those barriers in terms of planning. So, ensuring that the areas that are brought forward for planning will genuinely be built on, rather than, as we see at the moment, plots of land being included in local development plans, then they have the impact of raising the value of that land, but actually doing very little to improve the rate of house building. So, I would point to 'Planning Policy Wales' as being an important move forward, in terms of being able to break down some of the barriers that we are seeing to the pace of house building across Wales.

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson—Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, you spoke at the Crisis conference on ending homelessness back in June, and I'm sure you've read the report that was produced at that event, which outlines what can be done to end homelessness. It's a very comprehensive report, with recommendations for all Governments, including your Government. Can you tell us what you learnt from that event and from the report, and how it's influencing your decision making?

Thank you very much for that. As you say, I did attend that report, and have read the very extensive document—I think it's about 2 inches thick. So, it certainly is full of evidence, which we are taking very seriously. What I learnt from that conference, really, was about the importance of supporting people with a direct impact of an experience of homelessness and listening to people who have had that experience of homelessness. Because, of course, I stayed for longer than my own slot within that conference, and was able to hear directly from people who have that experience of homelessness, which I think has to be the answer in terms of guiding us to our response. This is one of the exciting things that Swansea is doing, with the additional funding that we've been able to provide to them for tackling rough sleeping. They're undertaking some work with Shelter to gather those individual stories of rough sleepers, so that we can understand at what point an intervention could have been made to prevent that rough sleeping, how we could have helped people out of rough sleeping much sooner, and how we can prevent people from losing their tenures in future.

Thank you, Minister. For some years now in Plaid Cymru, we've been arguing the case for the phasing out of priority need. Now, two weeks ago, you responded to my colleague, saying that that was the subject of a review. But, of course, in 2012, your Government commissioned Cardiff University to review homelessness law, and they recommended abolishing priority need, a recommendation endorsed this year by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, and, of course, there's this recommendation in the Crisis report. So, why has your Government rejected the recommendations of these reviews, and instead asked for another one?

Well, we're looking very seriously at the issue of priority need, and I completely understand where the call is coming from on it, and I am sympathetic to it, but, at the same time, we need to understand any possible unintended consequences. For example, when we look at the situation in Scotland, where they abolished priority need, you find larger groups of people staying for much longer in temporary accommodation, which isn't something that we would want to see here in Wales. So, we need to be doing this alongside the increasing of the supply of housing, and also, the rolling out of housing first, for example.

This is certainly an area that we are looking at, but it can't be done in isolation, because the unintended consequences are there. And if you look at Scotland, where they have removed priority need, you can walk around Edinburgh or another city, and there will be people sleeping on the streets and rough sleeping, so it isn't a panacea by any stretch of the imagination. It has to be part of a larger picture. 

You've had since 2012 to work out the unintended consequences on this, and the numbers of street sleepers are on the rise. People are becoming homeless and staying homeless because of your delaying tactics, and we need action on this now. Now, your colleague Andy Burnham in Manchester has pledged to eradicate rough sleeping by 2020, eight years sooner than your Government, seven years sooner than the Tory target, and, as part of that, he spent the autumn working with local authorities to provide a bed for every rough sleeper this winter, every night, in a range of accommodation, including women-only places and places that also allow people to take their dogs. Members of the public can now download an app that they can use to direct rough sleepers to where they can have assistance. Why is this level of ambition and action possible in Manchester, but it's not possible from your Government?

Well, clearly, you're not aware of the work that we're doing through our housing first programme, and also, through the rough sleeper action plan, which was published last year, and the fact that we've asked every single local authority in Wales to put forward a homelessness reduction plan and a plan to tackle homelessness that has a specific focus on rough sleeping. When you look at the number of places that are available, as compared to the number of people who are rough sleeping, actually, in many cases, there are the beds there. But I understand that they're not attractive to the people who are rough sleeping because, in many cases, rough sleepers tell me that they don't want to go to certain places because they can't be around people who are taking drugs or using alcohol, or people want to stay with their dogs, or people want to go as a couple. So, we've asked local authorities to address this in their housing action plans, which will be submitted to Government by the end of this month. 

UKIP spokesperson—Gareth Bennett. 

Diolch, Llywydd. There were press reports recently that revealed that Cardiff is now the second highest council area in the whole of the UK for collecting bus lane fines. Some quarter of a million drivers were fined in the course of a year. Only Glasgow council, in fact, fined more drivers than Cardiff. Now, I appreciate the need to adhere to the local driving restrictions, but, sometimes, mistakes can be made innocently because drivers aren't familiar with an area. The RAC are saying that, with this number of people being fined, there are probably genuine problems for drivers with things like signage and the road layouts. Do you think there is a danger that councils like Cardiff could be too punitive in collecting fines from drivers for these kinds of minor driving offences?

Presiding Officer, I have no responsibility for these matters raised by the Member. What I will say is that it is a matter for the local authority to deliver on their responsibilities in a way that they see fit, and then, a matter for residents and electors in Cardiff to hold the council to account for those decisions. 

I appreciate the need for local democracy and for decisions to be made at the ballot box, as you indicate. But, of course, people make decisions at the ballot box based on a variety of factors, not merely whether or not they were fined for driving in a bus lane. So, as you have oversight for local government in Wales, I wonder if you are perhaps alive to the possibility that there could be a danger that councils, without naming any particular council, perhaps in this instance—[Interruption.] Well, let's forget I named that council, is there a theoretical—? To please the Minister and to perhaps engineer a more enlightening answer, is there a theoretical possibility that councils could be perhaps too punitive in collecting these kinds of fines?

That may theoretically be true. Let me say this to the Member for South Wales Central, who's clearly having some difficulties with this matter: I do not believe it is right and proper for Ministers standing here in this place to pass comment upon the decisions taken by local government in fulfillment of its functions. We have accountability here for decisions taken by the Welsh Government, not by individual local authorities. 

Yes, indeed, you are correct in stating that. Thinking about the issue of fines as a general issue, we know—I think we can agree on this point—that local government is in a difficult place at the moment in terms of its finances. Is there a possibility that sometimes councils could be over punitive on many kinds of fines and they could be simply using the local ratepayers as cash cows? 

I will, Presiding Officer, provide the leader of UKIP with a list of ministerial responsibilities prior to our next session in this place [Laughter.] I have been very, very clear with him, and other Members, to be fair, who have tried equally as hard to tempt me into a terrible indiscretion—[Interruption.] But I will not be tempted on this occasion to make a comment upon the decisions of any local council in any part of the country. It is right that we have debated, and we will debate again, the difficulties facing local government in terms of funding arrangements and how it will exercise its responsibilities into the future, but I have made it my policy, and I continue to make it my policy not to comment upon the individual decisions of individual authorities. That is a matter for them, and they are accountable to their electorate, not to this place here.