7. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Housing

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:43 pm on 9 January 2019.

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Photo of Hefin David Hefin David Labour 5:43, 9 January 2019

It's incredibly difficult to have a reasonable conversation like this out there, especially, as I've found, during an election campaign. Lindsey Whittle stood in a green field holding a bucket of mud, and he said, 'I'm not going to put this bucket of mud down, because as soon as I do, the Labour Party will build a house on it'. This was said in a Facebook video during an election campaign, which was shared with, would you believe, 20,000 people. I was counting it as the numbers were going up. So, when we talk about a political consensus, I think it's incredibly difficult to arrive at that, and I'd say to Mark Reckless, yes, we have arrived at this agreement that we need a strategic development plan, that connecting into Cardiff isn't happening with Caerphilly's LDP, and it's wrong to build on Caerphilly mountain, but that was something I came to through discussion with Carl Sargeant, during the election campaign. Believe me, UKIP and Plaid Cymru weren't pushing that argument in any meaningful way. All they were saying was, 'Labour want to build on your green land', and that was the simple end of the matter.