The following amendments have been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Rebecca Evans, and amendments 2, 3 and 4 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3 and 4 will be deselected.

The next item is the Welsh Conservative debate on housing, and I call on David Melding to move the motion.

Motion NDM6909 Darren Millar

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Recognises that the number of homes being built in Wales is inadequate to meet demand.

2. Regrets that:

a) there are currently more than 27,000 empty homes in Wales; and

b) the average house price in Wales is now roughly over 6 times the average earnings due to a shortage of homes.

3. Notes the Welsh Conservatives 'Housing a Nation' white paper which presents a comprehensive strategy to tackle Wales's housing crisis and provide suitable housing for all.

4. Calls on the Welsh Government to;

a) acknowledge the need to build at least 100,000 homes between 2021-2031; and

b) give greater flexibility to housing associations so that they can develop a range of tenures to meet the demand for affordable housing.

Motion moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I'm delighted to open this debate and can I start with a very happy task and welcome the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James, to her post? Quiet genuinely, it is a matter, I think, we can celebrate that we have again a Minister of Cabinet rank especially designated for housing—although also responsible for another department, but one closely linked to housing in local government. I'm thankful that the First Minister fulfilled a promise I think he made, actually, during his election campaign for the position of Labour leader in designating a housing Minister of Cabinet rank. This is a real step forward.

I'm going to open this debate with a quote from the previous chief executive of the Home Builders Federation, and I quote:

'All the signs are that, without effective action taken now, Wales is heading for a housing crisis equal to or possibly worse than in the rest of the UK…We are urging the Welsh Assembly that unless urgent action is taken, the country's housing crisis will have severe consequences on the future growth and prosperity of the country as a whole.'

Llywydd, those words were actually spoken in 2004—15 years ago. We've had at least 15 years of warning, perhaps even longer according to other experts, yet here we are trying to combat a broken housing market, which is now one of the greatest barriers to social well-being, and it's hurting ordinary working people the most. 

Only yesterday, Shelter released a report that began with a stark truth about the failures of policy making in the UK in relation to housing and home ownership. I do urge people to at least read the executive summary. I think it's a really important document. If I can quote what the report says:

'we live in a country that is feeling the effects of 40 years of failure in housing policy.'

It's important to be candid here and not to avoid the implications of that for all parties, I think, that have been in Government.

The drop in the number of young families moving into ownership—the report points out the rise of pensioners in insecure, unaffordable private rentals, and the homelessness that scars our society are all everyday reminders of this policy failure. 

The report goes on to predict that unless we tackle this issue head-on, a generation of young families will be trapped renting privately for their whole lives. By 2040, the report calculates that as many as one third of 60-year-olds could be renting privately, facing unaffordable rent increases or eviction at any point. 

The need for a holistic and cohesive strategy to tackle this issue has never been clearer, and the need for a cross-party consensus has never been more needed. All of us in public life have been part of the problem. Now we must join together and build a policy to solve the crisis. This, Llywydd, is what today's debate is all about. Today I urge all Members to support our motion, which puts on record that this Assembly recognises that we simply haven't done enough and we need to do much more. 

Already, the UK Government has begun to recognise the scale of the task ahead of us, and that is what we now need to do here in the Assembly. The UK Government has established a target of 300,000 new homes per year, a target they hope to meet in the 2020s. Indeed, it's one of the reasons that Shelter has issued the report, and it comments on that target quite extensively. 

For those on the front line, the housing crisis means struggling to pay your mortgage or not being able to pay your rent. Others worry about where they'll spend the next night, some ending up, as we know, on the streets, sleeping rough. We cannot allow this to continue. Housing is a basic need and the right to decent housing is as important as the right to healthcare. One thing is certain, we need to build more homes. Many more homes—we believe at least 100,000 new homes in Wales in the 2020s.

To achieve this, clearly we need a new political consensus, because if there's a change of Government or there's a coalition, whatever happens in terms of those responsible for making policy, there must be that consistency that comes from a deep political consensus. That is what we had after the second world war in a 25-year period when both political parties and the other minor parties that were involved in scrutinising that work committed to ambitious housing targets and achieved remarkable things, I think, for the people of Wales and the whole of the UK.

Demand for housing has outstripped supply in Wales, as it has across the UK. For many, many years, this has been the case. The extra requirements for housing mainly came about as a result of the increase in the number of households, especially one-person households, which reflect more modern living, but also other factors, such as the rise in population.

The Welsh Conservative Party has issued its own housing strategy, 'Housing a Nation'. I know some of you have asked for it, and I've been happy to distribute it, and some of you have commented very constructively. Obviously, there'll be things in it that you will not share completely, in terms of the emphasis that we would place on those issues, but we really believe that it's important that we set out our vision and that we get the discussion started. I'm really grateful to everyone who's taken an interest in that. Our present ideas, then, map out a route so that we can begin to solve the challenges ahead, but, obviously, it's for others, now, to join together and for us all to form that consensual position.

We discuss affordability and home ownership, the issue of land and its supply, and developments in construction and innovation. We put greater emphasis on the variety, suitability and design of housing. We propose greater collaboration between housing associations and local authorities, and put forward ideas to encourage greater community engagement. We raise the issue of employment within the construction sector, and the upskilling of experienced workers who risk falling behind the evolution of housing standards, particularly with more modern building techniques. This is an area that rarely gets talked about in any debate, really, on housing, but it really is quite crucial, and I'm glad the Shelter report does mention it, because there's a great opportunity here for us. As Shelter emphasise, the importance of residential construction to the domestic economy is vast, with one of the highest multipliers that have been calculated, standing at 184 per cent. So, it's a really good activity for the economy as well as the massive social need it meets.

We also talk about the sustainable building of homes—not just sustainable in terms of their materials but sustainable for adaptability in the future so that they're not merely suitable today but suitable for their whole lives.

As I said, our ideas are not the be-all and end-all. We've put them forward, actually, as a White Paper, to get greater stakeholder and political engagement, so that we can be informed about what works and what doesn't.

I think, Llywydd, I need just to mention briefly some of the costs that might be involved. Again, I recommend that people have a look at the Shelter report. It does deal with England only, but it's not difficult to read over and to make some calculations. Most of the costs will involve capital investment and borrowing, particularly in the early part of their term.

Shelter do calculate on a 20-year programme, and our own housing strategy looks at a 10-year programme. Anyway, if you look at Shelter, they asked Capital Economics to estimate the type of level of expenditures that would be required—this for England. The average additional borrowing per annum for that programme was calculated at £3.8 billion. If you read across to Wales, that would be £190 million. It's a substantial sum of money, but in the previous debate we were hearing about transport infrastructure and the costs there. Peak borrowing in the English programme is calculated at £5.4 billion. If you read across to Wales, that would be something like £270 million.

This is part of the new consensus that we need—that we need to borrow. I think we all have various views about how to manage austerity, but borrowing for infrastructure, which pays back—houses don't run away and people pay rent—is something that we need now to focus on. The Welsh Government would get our support in advancing these arguments as well, because borrowing for investment that's clearly needed is an intelligent thing to do. 

So, Llywydd, the Welsh Conservatives stand ready to work with the Welsh Government. This is a genuine offer, and I know that we need to replicate that success that we had after the second world war. So, let's end the petty politicking, and let's work together to meet Wales's great housing challenges. Diolch yn fawr.  

I have selected the four amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3 and 4 will be deselected. I call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government to move formally amendment 1 tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. 

Amendment 1—Rebecca Evans

Delete all and replace with:

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Recognises:

a) the record investment being made in housing by the Welsh Government.

b) that a new assessment of housing need and demand is necessary, based on up-to-date data and the latest household projections.

2. Welcomes:

a) the Welsh Government commitment to deliver 20,000 affordable homes during this term of government, which is on track and will be delivered in partnership with the housing sector.

b) the introduction of land transaction tax in Wales and the £180,000 starting threshold for the main residential rate, which means that the majority of homebuyers, and the vast majority of first-time buyers, pay no tax when buying a home.

3. Acknowledges the Welsh Government’s continuing commitment to social housing, which has remained a fundamental priority, supporting the most vulnerable and protecting our existing social housing stock, unlike in England.

4. Notes the flexibility available to housing associations so they can develop a range of tenures to meet the demand for affordable housing.

Amendment 1 moved.

Formally. 

I call on Leanne Wood to move amendments 2, 3 and 4 tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. Leanne Wood. 

Amendment 2—Rhun ap Iorwerth

In point 1, after 'being built', insert 'in the social housing sector'.

Amendment 3—Rhun ap Iorwerth

In point 2, delete sub-point (b) and replace with:

that low wages, insecure employment and high rents present significant barriers to home ownership.

Amendment 4—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Delete points 3 and 4 and replace with:

Notes that homelessness has risen substantially, and that this has cost public services considerably more than it would have cost to prevent homelessness.

Calls on the Welsh Government to:

a) support housing associations and local authorities to increase the social housing stock through maximising their ability to access finance for this purpose, including through the use of Welsh Government borrowing powers;

b) implement the recommendations of the Crisis report, 'Everybody In: How to end homelessness in Great Britain';

c) ensure that local development plans include a requirement for investment in public services in order that new developments can become sustainable communities; and

d) ensure that local development plans include a substantially greater proportion of social housing.

Amendments 2, 3 and 4 moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I move the amendments.

This is, of course, a very important debate, and I agree that we need to find a consensus on this question if it is at all possible, but we also need to be clear on what exactly the problems that we are trying to solve are, and this is what our amendments seek to do. And we will be contributing further to this debate with the Plaid Cymru consultation publication on housing in due course. 

So, to be clear on the true nature of the housing shortage, let's take one projection of future housing demand to illustrate the point that I want to make. A Public Policy Institute for Wales report on the future need and demand for housing estimates that between 2011 and 2031 an additional 8,700 housing units are needed each year. Of these, 63 per cent would be in the market sector—that's 5,500 a year—and 37 per cent in the social sector—that's 3,300 a year. But if population growth is higher, then the report estimates that we need 12,000 units a year, of which 35 per cent would need to be in the social housing sector—that's 4,200 per year. 

Now, let's take a look at house building over the last 20 years and how it relates to the figures that I've just provided. Between 1997 and 2007, there were an average of 7,591 units completed in the market sector each year. Between 2007 and 2017, that figure dropped to an average of 5,573 units. In both decades, the level of performance will be enough to meet the PPIW's main predictions of need, but if performance similar to the last decade continues, then that would cause supply problems in the event of the higher population estimates turn out to be correct.

We can see from these figures that the supply of housing from the market sector, therefore, is sufficient. But if we look at the performance in social housing, a very different picture emerges indeed. Between 1997 and 2007, just 825 new units of social housing were built each year, and that only increases to 850 each year in the last 10 years. But the Public Policy Institute for Wales estimate that we need between 3,300 and 4,200 additional units of social housing every year, yet just 850 homes when we need over 4,000. That gap is absolutely staggering.

So, we must be clear that it's social housing where the greatest supply shortage is. Too often, the view that we need more houses is one that's used as a lobbying tool for watering down planning laws and building regulations, and for railroading local development plans against local opposition that don't consider at all how to create sustainable communities. None of those solutions will actually solve our housing problems. They say nothing about homelessness, and that solving homelessness means a relentless focus on increasing social housing. So, we have to resist those vested interests by making sure that the motion before us is clearer on this point, and is clear that housing supply must be about the creation of communities, not just units in concrete jungles unsupported by public services.

We also have to recognise that the overwhelming barrier to home ownership is low wages, insecure employment and high rents that prohibit many young people from saving for a deposit. More six-bedroomed homes in the suburbs will do nothing to help those people get onto the housing ladder.

The debate today has been brought forward by the Conservatives following the publication of their policy paper on housing, a paper that does not recognise the underlying causes of the crisis that we're in: that is, the decisions of successive Governments to underinvest in social housing and to put the responsibility for providing shelter—a fundamental human right—into the hands of private companies seeking profit. The Tory party are responsible for decimating our housing stock, introducing the bedroom tax and implementing welfare changes that have made thousands of people homeless, so forgive me if I am skeptical that they've suddenly found their conscience on this issue. I hope, in clarifying the problems in housing supply, that we can begin to find solutions that will make a difference to the lives of people here in Wales rather than to the profit of developers. We need a programme of mass building of social housing in order to solve this crisis and we need it urgently. 

I'm pleased to contribute to today's debate and to support this motion—a motion that was moved very eloquently, as usual, by David Melding at the start of this debate, and he made some very important points.

I think we all know that we've got a problem when it comes to housing in Wales. Let's face it, as Leanne Wood just said, we've had that problem for a considerable length of time, so there aren't going to be any quick fixes when it comes to the provision of homes. Quite simply, whichever way you look at it, we haven't got enough homes to meet demand. Or probably, to be more accurate, we haven't got enough of the right type of homes to meet demand at appropriate points in people's lives, because those demands do change through people's lives. At the very least, we don't have enough homes that are adaptable. Last year, I was very pleased to be asked to open a small new housing development in my home village of Raglan, a development by Monmouthshire Housing Association of around five or six houses—highly sought-after homes. I was struck by both the quality of the construction, but also the adaptability of the homes so that people, whether they were in their early 20s, whether they were single, whether they were having children or whether they were older, in their 60s, 70s or 80s, would be able to stay in those homes throughout their lives and wouldn't move if they didn't want to. I thought that was a great concept and one that needs to be developed.

Of course, housing associations are doing their best to meet demand, due in no small part to the cost of buying your own home nowadays. As David Melding said, house prices are now roughly around six times average earnings—in some cases more—due to the shortage that we face. So, we do need to build more, but not just more. We need to address the fact that there are also—let's not forget—an estimated 27,000 empty homes in Wales as I stand here talking about these statistics. Let's do what we can to bring those into use, because that must be an efficient way to proceed. I think if we satisfy the public that spare capacity—what spare capacity there is—is being used, then there will be fewer objections to developments. And let's face it, there are, I'm sure, in all our constituencies, some developments that are more controversial than others. Those developments will be more acceptable if people feel that spare housing stock is being brought into use. This doesn't mean, though, that planning should—pardon the pun—go out of the window. And I don't believe we should be building at any cost—far from it. We need a streamlined, robust planning process that has the confidence of the public and delivers in a way that is acceptable to local authorities but also acceptable to the public. Let's strive to have the best planning process, the most streamlined planning process, we possibly can here in Wales. 

I thought Leanne Wood made an excellent point, when you said, Leanne, that we need to build sustainable communities, not just sustainable houses. I think too often we talk about those things as though they're detached. We have debates on communities in this Chamber, and today we're having a debate on housing, and sometimes we seem to act as though they're totally separate and they shouldn't be. At the end of the day, housing developments that are built should be well served. They should have sustainability at their heart. They should be compliant with the future generations legislation. That's another piece of legislation we often talk about in this Chamber, but then we go on to talk about other topics without realising that that legislation should be at the heart of building. So, if we're going to build a development in a village in a rural area, of course it's going to be controversial if it's not well supported by sustainable transport, if we're allowing those houses to be built and then expecting people to rely on the motor car, sometimes two or three in a family, or to rely on taxis or to rely on whatever means it means. I'm not saying there has to be a rail link to every village, but there has to be an appreciation that new homes do need sustainable infrastructure, sustainable local services, sustainable schools. How often are developments constructed without proper thought for local schools and services like that?

So, there is a lot to be done, but I think that at the heart of this must be: yes, we need more houses, but we also need more quality houses. And I'll finish, Presiding Officer, by just talking about Electrical Safety First, a charity I met very recently with over the Christmas period. They stressed the need to make sure that modern houses are built to a high standard that avoids the high presence of electrical fires, and they gave me one statistic, which I will finish with, which is that over-80-year-olds are four times more likely to die in an electrical fire than anyone else. We don't currently have mandatory electrical safety checks in our housing stock in Wales. Perhaps we should. There are loads of areas where we could actually move things on, particularly, as I said, with the planning process.

First, can I welcome this debate and also welcome the Conservatives' 'Housing a Nation' White Paper? I don't agree with it all, but I think it's a good place for us to start talking. I don't believe we discuss housing anywhere near enough in the Assembly, and also the far too much general talk of housing is based around rising house prices being good for homeowners and mortgage payers as opposed to bad for first-time buyers, people renting and those who are inadequately housed, which includes a lot of my constituents.

Housing is the great challenge facing all of Britain, including Wales. The post-war period in terms of housing can be broken down into two periods: first, the period 1945 to 1980. During this period, we saw a huge growth in council housing, the building of a large number of new estates, especially in larger urban areas. We also saw the growth of owner-occupation and the start of building of large private estates, again predominantly in the larger urban areas.

Over recent years, there has been a large increase in the number of empty properties. I've heard all sorts of numbers, between 16,000 and 27,000. If I use the term 'over 20,000', to me, that's over 20,000 too many. A number of these, including some in my constituency, are in places people actually want to live. They're not sort of out in 'who'd want to live there?' People often want to live there; it's just that they've just been left. Something's got to be done about this. There's also been the increase in—. Housing tenure, there's been an increase in the number of single-person households, because people have got older and more young people are living alone, an increase in pensioner households, an increase in young people in houses of multiple occupation, especially, but not exclusively, students. Council housing has declined through the sale of a large number of houses and a failure to build new ones. There's also been a substantial growth in housing association properties but nowhere near enough to make up for the decline in council house building.

The decline in the private rented sector of the 1960s and 1970s has been reversed, with a huge increase in private landlords, both the large-scale owners and those using an additional property as an alternative to a pension. As a consequence of benefit changes, demand has increased for smaller size accommodation. Since 1980, we have seen almost a complete end to council house building, the growth of owner-occupation, which has stalled, and the growth of housing associations into major landlords has occurred, but they're not going anywhere near making up for the loss in council houses.

During the whole of this period, we've seen a reduction in the average number of adults living in each property, and the sale of council housing has had a serious effect on the housing market. It has reduced the supply of council housing, and that has increased demand for both housing association properties and privately rented. Anybody who's gone around council estates campaigning will have noted the number of 'for rent' signs—privately rented—on properties built by councils in the past. And can I let you know that the rents are substantially higher than the council charge?

There were two periods in the twentieth century when housing supply did a reasonable job of meeting housing demand and need. The first was between the wars, when cities expanded horizontally into the suburban development of green fields, assisted by government initiatives, and builders could offer affordable home ownership to people on middle to low incomes. And that was because we didn't have a planning Act. I don't think anybody wants to do away with the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, as amended, so the other option, after the second world war, was council housing, which, at one stage, accounted for roughly half the number of houses built. Anybody who follows elections—if you look at the British general election in 1974, at the book that is produced after each election, you will see the number of constituencies, mainly in Scotland, where over 50 per cent of the housing was council, but, in a large part of Wales, including my constituency, over 40 per cent of the housing was council.

So, we're now in a situation where we've got to do something. The number of private houses being built has always stayed roughly similar—it's gone up and down a little, but it's been fairly similar. Because, let's be honest, if you were a major house builder, why would you want to build surplus? If you build surplus, house prices will come down; you'll have empty properties. You want to keep demand high. And I don't blame the house builders for that; they'd be doing their shareholders a disservice. So, something has got to take up the slack. The only thing that's effectively taking up the slack is council housing, so that's where we've got to go.

We have seen some local authorities, including my own in Swansea, starting building council houses, but they need to be built on scale. I mean, if you look—. The First Minister represents possibly the largest council estate in Wales, based in Ely. I represent one of the largest council estate areas, which really is a number of different names, but it stretches from Clase to Blaenymaes, across the north of Swansea. These provided houses for people. There are large obstacles to a renaissance of council-house building, including, but not only, the obvious one of money. How do we get around it? Well, allow councils to borrow against the value of their stock. I think that—.

Can I just finish with two points? We need to build a substantial number of council houses and we need to bring more empty properties back into use. Bring the 20,000 empty properties back into use, get council houses built. And, if I'd had time, I'd have said how important co-operative houses were.

It's a pleasure to follow Mike Hedges, and I think most of the points he's made about council housing and the importance of building for social rent are well made. I would, however, emphasise that, whatever the exact target we have—and, in our motion, we call for, I think, 10,000 houses a year; the Government has a different target and perhaps different proportions, but, in all those, it's likely that the majority of that housing is going to need to come from the private sector, and, as Mike rightly observes, house builders are there primarily to make profits for their shareholders.

Now, one thing we've seen in south-east Wales, where I'm going to focus my remarks, is, in some areas particularly, a significant rise in house prices. On the Office for National Statistics numbers from September to November, the last three months available, the year-on-year increase has been over 13 per cent in both Newport and Torfaen and close to 11 per cent in Monmouthshire. Now, I hear from many in Plaid, but also, to a degree, within Labour, a lot of emphasis on people being priced out of housing potentially, in consequence, and also some perhaps who could be more welcoming to people coming into Wales—complaints about, 'Why should we deal with Bristol overspill?', for instance. And I would just like to emphasise the positive elements of this. We have people with really quite higher salaries in Bristol who are coming to live in Wales and are spending money locally, and, from April, will be paying the Welsh rates of income tax, so potentially giving more money for us to spend on public services.

And it is also those house price rises that, in turn, are bringing back really a very significant increase in house building. David Melding referred to the importance of that for the economy as a whole: 8 per cent of our economy, 8 per cent of our employment, is in construction and it's one of the areas where you do see economies growing quickly, and we want the Welsh economy to grow quickly. It is construction, almost invariably, which accelerates far faster than the economy as a whole, and that is a good thing and something we should want to see, and are beginning to see, in parts of south-east Wales. To a degree, it is supported by Welsh Government policy in terms of the Help to Buy and the proportion of that money that is going into these fast-growing areas. In Torfaen, just as recently as 2015-16, we had only 130 housing starts. In 2016-17, that went to 215—a 50 per cent increase—a similar increase the next year to 284, in 2017-18. And, in just the first six months of 2018-19, that annual figure has been surpassed: 299 starts—so, that rate of house building doubling year on year after three years of substantial increase before. And, if we look at Newport, in 2017-18, there were over 1,000 housing starts in the Newport council area, and that compares to 6,000 in Wales as a whole—

Will you take an intervention?

I will, yes.

I know that housing was a big part of the campaign in Caerphilly, and as a UKIP candidate, he was campaigning with that team in Caerphilly. Their position was diametrically opposed to everything that he's saying now, so will he just disavow what he said during the election campaign in 2016?

Well, I thought I was in some agreement with the Member on this, and in particular, the Caerphilly LDP and going and ripping that up and looking to start again, and some of the proposals for building on Caerphilly mountain and how those would be dependent on car use and the need to link up with what was happening in the Cardiff LDP. I thought that was all sensible and I thought that there was a degree of agreement between us within that.

But certainly, in the numbers in Caerphilly, the building has been less than these big increases we've seen in Torfaen and Newport, which I wanted to emphasise. And I think they relate to the ending of the Severn tolls. We will see economic growth because the Severn tolls have gone, but also, the house building, in turn, is helping to drive that economic growth. You're going to say, 'Oh, but there was more housing equity', but actually, that's really important. If the value of people's houses goes up, one of the things that leads to is substantially more business formation and business growth. And, when I look at the levels of new business formation or entrepreneurship in south-east Wales and compare that to what I saw before in south-east England, I don't believe that there is a difference in the entrepreneurialism of the individuals or even necessarily that much in the skills that people bring to those businesses. The big difference is the availability of housing equity, and we have some good stuff from the Wales Development Bank, but overall, private sector banks find it very difficult to lend to small, upstart businesses where they don't have security. Yet, if the directors are in a position to give a personal guarantee of housing equity, then there is a lot more business lending, which drives a lot more economic growth through small businesses, and that's something I think we should welcome and support that house building and what it's doing for the overall economy, driven by south-east Wales. Let's encourage it.

Thanks to the Conservatives for bringing today's debate on housing. We support the Conservative motion today; we think it's quite focused and concentrates on the need to increase housing supply. It's actually fairly flexible in the suggestions it makes as to how to increase that supply. 

The Labour amendment follows a particular pattern that we're getting quite used to in the Assembly, in that it basically states that the Welsh Government is doing enough. This is often what we get from Government amendments. And, of course, I appreciate that the Welsh Government is doing things in the field of housing, but the danger, of course, is one of complacency. If we look at the Conservative motion and the Labour amendment together, it is clear that there is a discrepancy between the two different targets for house building. I do think that Labour's target is fairly modest and that, even if it is achieved, it will not address the entirety of the demand for affordable homes in Wales. So, we in the UKIP group don't agree fully with the Labour amendment that, today, we oppose.

I was going to say that the Plaid amendments raise issues with which we partially agree, but then, Leanne Wood made a very good case for the need to focus on social housing, which was backed up by statistics. So, I think we do need to look at what level of social housing we need to bring into play. Certainly, I think there is a need to focus on social housing to a large extent, but I don't think we should necessarily focus on social housing to the exclusion of all else. I think we do need a mixture of affordable new housing. Part of the Plaid amendments do deal at length with the issue of homelessness, which, of course, is a massive concern. I do think that there are so many elements of that, though, that perhaps those points require another debate to deal with them.

Now, Labour have a target of 20,000 new affordable homes over a five-year term, which equals 4,000 homes a year. The Conservatives today state the target, referencing their earlier report, of 100,000 in a 10-year period, which equals 10,000 homes a year. We also have the figures from Dr Alan Holmans that suggested that Wales might need 12,000 new homes a year. So, if Dr Holmans is correct, the Conservatives' target seems more meaningful than the Labour one. The housing Minister here today will probably agree that no target is really meaningful unless it's achievable, but we do prefer the greater ambition of the Conservative target.

Another problem is how to ensure that the homes built actually are affordable, and this is a big problem with a lot of private developments; when they come on the market, they simply aren't affordable for many people and there are also problems with the amount of affordable housing that is initially part of the planning agreements. Sometimes, this seems to get overridden in the process of the house builders actually developing their schemes. So, that, I think, does need looking at. That's a planning issue.

I think there may be other ways of getting more affordable housing by utilising the private sector. For instance, we need to look more at modular housing, which is relatively cheap to build, can be erected quickly, and can help to create jobs. But building these kinds of houses does need different skills to traditional housing methods, so we do need to ensure that we have enough skilled people to work on these schemes. I know that the previous housing Minister, Rebecca Evans, was working to develop this sector, and I hope that her very capable successor will continue with this work. It does require an interactive approach between the Welsh Government, the private sector and further education colleges. 

We also need to encourage more infill development and small-scale housing developments, which will tend to be attractive not to the large house builders, but rather to the SMEs, which I do think need to play a bigger part in the house building industry in Wales. We could also do more to encourage brownfield development. There is also considerable demand from people wanting to build their own homes. According to opinion polls, some 53 per cent of people have expressed an interest in this, and rates of self-building are much higher in some western European countries than here in Wales—notably Austria, where 80 per cent of houses are self-built. In the UK, the figure is only 7 per cent to 10 per cent. So, I don't know if we can do anything in Wales to encourage this part of the housing sector.

There are other things we can do to alleviate the—[Interruption.] Of course, yes.

The problem is land and getting access to land, and that's why you've got a difficulty with the self-build sector.

Yes, I appreciate that there probably are difficulties over access to land. I think it's worth looking at, but I understand it is a major challenge.

Empty homes are another issue, and there is a measure that local councils can bring in called 'empty dwelling management Orders', which could force the hand of developers who are leaving properties empty for long periods. So, these can be used, perhaps, under some circumstances. There's also the vacant land tax, which I know is pending, and I do await the Government bringing details of that to the Chamber. Certainly, that's a measure that UKIP would probably favour. So, there are a variety of measures that could be used. The key factor is that we do end up with significantly more homes in Wales that are affordable. Diolch yn fawr.

When we talk about housing generically in debates like this, I think it's quite easy to avoid the specifics of the types of housing that we need, where it's needed, and maybe even thinking about where we don't need it any more; we might want to change the use of some of our existing stock. 

I think it's also helpful to move away from this kind of whiff of goodies and baddies, which are sometimes characterised in some of our housing debates, because what we're after here, as David Melding said right at the beginning, is consensus on a direction that we can take. Because, despite the quality public housing that, actually, Mike Hedges was talking about earlier, built between the wars in Swansea, some of them are still in places of persistent deprivation, and I think we can all point to other housing estates, council estates—built in various places that I've lived and worked in anyway—built in the 1960s and 1970s, that I think would even shock us now, despite the quality standards and so forth and despite being taken over by housing associations, simply because of the way they were designed in the first place. These are things that we need to avoid from now on. 

My parents were children in—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, very briefly, if that's okay.

I'm really encouraged by this idea of building a consensus around housing policy, and you're talking about council housing. Some of the best council housing—the bigger, family properties—were all sold off under the right to buy. In order to reach this consensus, would you be prepared to ditch your ideological obsession with that policy?

Do you know what, Leanne? I don't have ideological obsessions, but I do think that our councils should have the ability to use the money that they raise from Right to Buy to build new houses, or indeed invest them in older housing stock that needs bringing up.

That's not what happened, though, is it?

But I'm not interested in the past; I'm interested in the future. Can I just say, as well, incidentally, that Penyrenglyn is a really good example of where the community has taken control of housing use there? I mean, you know the estate that I'm talking about; Valleys Kids and their friends have made a huge difference to community housing there. So, that's the type of thing I would rather us discuss than the silly, nonsensical stuff that Leanne Wood is prepared to talk about. 

I just wanted to say: a bit of context to this is that my parents grew up as children in the second world war, so I grew up in a household where they'd experienced this big explosion of housing that Mike was talking about, but it was also an era when wastefulness was frowned upon and expensive purchases were planned for, partly because of the need to save up, and partly to avoid the situation where—people didn't have to panic buy something because they had no choice.

Now, Lee Waters will be familiar with the Brynmefys estate in Furnace, and that was my grandparents' home for most of their lives. Perhaps, actually, it's a cautionary tale as well against over-embracing the non-traditional construction methods, but, more importantly, I think it was a wasted opportunity to house people, because that estate is so broken now it virtually needs to be rebuilt. I think there are particular local reasons, to be fair, for that, but wastefulness is not a reason for the 27,000 empty homes. That reason can't be local in every single case.

So, I've encouraged Welsh Government over the years to consider our policy of extending Help to Buy to bring suitable empty properties back into use, because Help to Buy currently favours larger construction firms, although, of course, they do sub-contract. It's a variation that would offer more direct help for those small firms that characterise our economy, as they are the ones that are interested in maintenance and repair and renovation work. So while, of course, I think, like we all do, that the should be more building, instead of putting all our eggs in the new-build basket, how about a renewed focus on keeping existing, basically sound properties in circulation as homes in communities where cohesion is potentially threatened, and where property remains relatively inexpensive, and where connectivity, physical and digital, should be the driver of the sustainability of those communities?

Now, yes, we've had Welsh Government schemes. We've had Houses into Homes—£30 million promised since 2012 for short-term, interest-free loans to owners of empty properties to help them renovate. I only have the figures up to 2015, I'm sorry, but by that time just 360 loans had been approved and 40 per cent of the work completed. I think it's an expensive, poorly advertised system to deliver a highly supportable purpose, slightly surprisingly for this Government, aimed at private owners in the rental market.

Now, ethical private landlords are important providers of homes, and I commend the work of The Wallich and Crisis, who've been working with private landlords in tackling homelessness. Most private landlords are not careless of their tenants, or greedy, and as a property lawyer in the two housing booms that preceded the crash, I can say that not all buy-to-let was about that awful money bubble. There were ordinary people, constituents who inherited or bought a property to be their pension pot. I think Mike mentioned this. Of course, Gordon Brown had sold off the gold, investment rates were very low, about to get worse, so of course people were worried about their future security, and many of those are today's private landlords.

Just to finish, Llywydd, if you don't mind: this being wasteful, that's one thing; panic buying is another thing. I'd hazard that most LDPs reflect an element of this panic. After years of limited building, councils are now finding themselves pushed into these large candidate sites on the edges of established communities, with all the problems with services, sometimes with the advice of developers who'll have insider knowledge, but without that courage to demand meaningful section 106 or community levy payments to pay for associated infrastructure. That heaps up trouble for leaseholders and even some freeholders, as Hefin David has mentioned fairly recently, in locations that have poor links to anywhere.

I have plenty more to say, but I don't think I've got time, Llywydd. But thank you very much.

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.

May I congratulate the Member? But I just wanted to ask him: with higher house prices in our region, is that a way of getting some more of the development into north of the Caerphilly borough and, likewise, in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil councils where, sometimes, we've only seen 50 houses started in a year?

If you can get small-firm house builders building then it's a possibility, but the problem we've got is that, in Wales, there is this oligopoly, this cartel of five big house builders who build 75 per cent of the homes and as long as they—

[Inaudible.]

Whether it's council houses or not, or whether it's social housing or not, you have got the dominance of this market of these large house builders who, as Mike Hedges has said, have no incentive to meet demand in full and who build in areas of very high demand and don't build houses that are affordable to those people who already live in those areas or live in areas just outside, to the north, which are lower income areas. So, as long as you've got this cartel dominating the market, then you're not going to be able to resolve the social housing problem either.

It was actually in 2013 that Persimmon said that they will no longer be building homes north of Pontypridd. They've said that publicly. Professor John Punter, professor of urban design at Cardiff University, said that there's no reason why we should be singling out particular areas of Wales not to build in. It comes down to the points that Mike Hedges has made: it's about the fact that once you start settling demand, then there's no reason to make a profit, there's less ability to make a profit, but also, need will never be met—need will never be met. So, I can see why it would be sensible to support Plaid Cymru's amendments, because the fact that we need to focus on social housing in areas that are not met by the demand curve, that are not meeting housing need, that is a must and therefore I can perfectly see that social housing needs to be a focus of the Welsh Government, and I urge the Welsh Government therefore to also support that.

It's not just an issue of housing, as has already been said, it's also an issue of the economy and growing the economy in those northern Valleys areas that I represent, but also in rural areas of Wales as well. The housing document that the Welsh Conservatives produced is interesting but the section on land supply doesn't talk about the cost of remediation. It isn't a costed document. The private sector cannot afford to meet the cost of remediation in many cases. The Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee are just about to start an inquiry into SMEs and house building, and I'm pretty sure that remediation of land will be a huge issue and it is a fact that local authorities have not got that funding either. I'm not a particularly partisan person, but austerity has certainly played a part in that lack of remediation of land, and the Conservatives must face up to that and take responsibility for it.

One of the other issues that I've raised has been the need for a strategic development plan. The First Minister mentioned—I think it was at his first First Minister's questions—the fact that the Cardiff capital region are now working on a strategic development plan and he's looking to see that operationalised. So, I say to the First Minister, 'Please, press that with the Cardiff capital region', and to the housing Minister, 'Press that with the capital region'; we need to see progress on that, and we need to see progress on that quickly. 

But the fact is, the debate we've had today is, in many ways, sensible, grown up, and slightly partisan too, as any debate that Leanne Wood is involved in will be, but it's not the kind of debate we would have out there in public. It isn't the kind of debate that we have during election times. Let's be sensible about this. If we're going to achieve a consensus, then we've got to stop using the kind of language that we use during the frenetic period of election campaigns.

The Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James.

Diolch, Llywydd. I very much welcome this debate and the opportunity to speak for the first time in my new portfolio because housing a key priority for the Welsh Government and because the First Minister has seen fit to draw together a number of related issues in my portfolio with the aim of being able to simplify and accelerate the housing supply.

And as David Melding acknowledged, we absolutely do need to prioritise and work together as much as possible. To paraphrase the First Minister in his first FMQs yesterday, we have the same need, want and desire for the outcome; the issue is, we don't always see the same path to that outcome. So, concentrating on the fact that we all want the same outcome, which is for all of the citizens of Wales to have a secure and decent place to live, with the easiest possible route to that secure and decent place to live, I think we'd all agree with that. The issue really is that we don't always agree on the methodology to get there, but we do accept a lot of what is set out in the Conservative document because we're already working on some parts of it. The areas of disagreement are there also, but I think we can build something that we can broadly agree on. We do recognise that delivering the number of homes required in both the market and affordable sectors is an ongoing challenge across the whole of the UK. Wales faces, as David Melding and many other acknowledged, the same issues as the rest of the country. We are taking significant steps to deliver the homes we need. 

We will be supporting the Plaid amendments because I do absolutely recognise Leanne Wood's submissions around social housing and the need for sustainable communities. I find nothing to disagree with in what she said about those needs and we will be looking very hard to see how we can accelerate the ability of both our registered social landlords and our councils to develop social housing at a much faster pace and at scale, if at all possible, utilising borrowing powers. It was great to hear people on the Conservative benches acknowledging the need to borrow for sustainable investment in housing stock. David Melding, I know, wholly agrees with that. We will be looking to see what we can do to support our local authorities to borrow substantially in order to invest in social housing of that sort. We've been working on a good partnership following the very successful initial talks that my predecessor in post had with the RSLs and local authorities. We'll be looking to develop that at pace in order to get the sort of scale we know is necessary.

And then in terms of—.

I thank the Minister for giving way. I couldn't as a Labour Co-operative Member let the debate go without actually putting a shout out for co-operative housing solutions and also community land trust models. If you look back to the 1980s, Bernie Sanders—I think he describes himself as a democratic socialist; I think in America they called him a communist—actually brought forward one of the most innovative, now one of the largest—over 500 homes—inner city areas that is devised on a community land trust model. We still have them at the edge of our thoughts and I wonder if we can develop those along the M4, in inner cities, like they're doing in Bristol and London and so on, as part of this solution. So, please give support to them as well. 

Yes, I will be coming on to talk about innovative forms of tenure and different models of developing the housing supply. A large number of them, probably all of the things that Huw Irranca-Davies has just mentioned, are in that list.

It is important to reiterate though that our fundamental policy on this side remains the delivery of additional social housing. So, whilst I don't take away from anything that was said about the delivery of private sector housing and the market and so on, our priority is to deliver additional social housing and the protection of our existing stock. Unlike the UK Government, we've never lost sight of the need to support the most vulnerable and the most in need, and that's why homes for social rent make up the biggest proportion of our 20,000 target. It's also why we've taken action to end the right to buy, which has seen so many homes in all parts of Wales lost from the affordable housing sector. I won't get into this again, but I have to say that I disagree with much of what was said on the Conservative benches about this.

The vast majority of my family also lived on the biggest council house estate in the north of Swansea, Gendros council house estate, which many of you will be familiar with. You've only got to walk along there and you can see the right to buys. They're not occupied by the people who bought them, they're occupied by private sector landlords who haven't upgraded those houses. They are not clad the way the local authority ones are, the windows and doors are not standard, the local authority ones are, the gardens are in poor condition, and it's really not good. I don't think that that has particularly helped—.

Will you give way?

Certainly.

I take your point there, and it's a really valid point, but would you concede that, with a sale, stipulations can be put on so in future that doesn't happen? That can easily be done. 

I think it would have been a better scheme if councils had always been allowed to reinvest the money that they got from the sale back into additional stock. Of course, that was prevented for the vast majority of the time that right to buy was in place. It had to be put against paying off debt and so on in an extremely non-beneficial way. I think that was a mistake. But, I actually fundamentally disagree with the principle in the first place, because actually I don't think there's anything wrong with having good social housing, having a tenure where you rent. Most of my family never wanted to own their own house, what they wanted was a decent place with security of tenure, a place to bring up their families, a place where their families could also live. So, if you want to buy, that's great, but I don't think we should build social housing with a view to selling it off into the private sector and that's why we've ended the right to buy.

We've had the debate about the right to buy and the Assembly's made its decision. What I think is crucial is to have mixed tenure. There's a lot of attention being given to this—that that's what's at the heart of sustainable communities. Just as we would favour, under conditions, the sale of council houses, we would favour, and this has been done a lot in the past, councils buying what's in the private stock at the moment and then letting it to social rent—this mixed approach is what we need to do, and be flexible.

That bit I do agree with. I'm not sure we'd quite have the same path to it, but, absolutely, a sustainable mixed tenure or mixed social make-up society is what we need. One of the things I bitterly regret about what's happened in the council estates where my family mostly live is that it's no longer a mixed economy at all—they have become ghetto estates, really, with particular people with particular types of problems pushed into the estates. That is the thing that's really caused much of the social difficulty, but that's a debate for another day—we're supposed to be talking about housing supply, mostly, here.

So, as I've said already, the new housing and local government portfolio brings together key policy areas that contribute the most to building more homes. I'm determined to use all of the relevant policy levers to deliver the homes we need. For example, we recognise the crucial role played by the planning system, and we'll continue to explore what we might do to strengthen planning so that we can deliver more homes. 

The publication of the revised 'Planning Policy Wales' before Christmas by, again, my predecessor, Lesley Griffiths, clearly sets out a more robust approach to the delivery of new homes by placing viability considerations upfront in the planning process. It seeks to give encouragement to SME builders and people who wish to build their own homes as well, as we completely acknowledge the point made by a number of people around the Chamber about the need to free up as much land as possible and to enable self-build in very large parts of Wales.

It's worth mentioning in regard to that that as part of the Valleys taskforce I was privileged to have some very good presentations from officials and others about what we can do to develop off-the-shelf plans for self-build, if you like, to help everybody in our society to see that they too could develop their own home in that way. I'm very pleased to be able to take that forward as well.

We completely recognise the role of Government investing in extra housing, as was said across the Chamber. Our record £1.7 billion investment in housing during this Assembly term is making a real difference. In 2017-18, over half of the new affordable homes built in Wales were delivered with a capital grant from the Welsh Government, so that's just one indication of the scale of the commitment. As I've said, I do agree with much of what's in the Conservative Party's strategy document in that regard.

As I said, we agree with the self-home proposals. We also agree that modular housing and off-site manufacture have an important and growing role to play. Housing organisations will be able to learn from the exciting projects beginning to emerge through the innovative housing programme, and I'm looking forward to visiting very shortly the development of a modular housing facility in north Wales to see what we can do to encourage all of our councils and our RSLs to take up the modular house building programme, which will accelerate the pace of build once you've actually got the thing running in the first place.

We're also supporting nearly 8,000 people to purchase a home through Help to Buy—Wales. To influence the behaviour of builders, banning the use of the scheme for new leasehold houses has all but eradicated the practice in Wales. The measures were the first of their kind in the UK. They helped secure agreement from the five biggest house builders in Wales that they would no longer sell houses on a leasehold basis. I think that's very much to be welcomed, and I want to explore whether that was sufficient or whether we do need to take any additional steps.

We're on track to deliver our target of bringing 5,000 empty homes back into use during this term of government. There are many empty properties, though, that are not coming forward, as Mike Hedges and a number of other people pointed out. We will be looking to see what further action might be taken to help address this, including making sure that local authorities use all of the levers at their disposal to encourage the bringing back into use of empty homes, including some of the council tax provisions that we've put in place and other tax levers—the vacant land tax and all the rest of it. I think we're looking at a vacant property tax as well as something that we might develop in future to try to encourage the bringing back into use of these houses.

Forgive me, I can't remember which Member said it, but I will be looking to see what we can do about the Houses into Homes initiative—I think it might have been Suzy Davies. I agree that it's not been well understood across the piece, and I think we could do a lot more with it, particularly in areas where there have been high concentrations of houses in multiple occupation, which would very much benefit from being brought back into family-home use.

Minister, you do need to bring your—

I am bringing my remarks to a close—thank you, Llywydd. 

This is a debate that's been so very welcome. You can see from the complexity of the remarks around the Chamber how much we can bring to bear in this space. So, I want to conclude—I've got a lot more that I could say in terms of what we're doing at the moment, but I want to bring the debate to a conclusion in this way. I very much welcome any contribution from any Member around the Chamber who thinks that they have something that would help us to increase the housing supply. It is the aim of everyone here—it is our shared aim—and I'm very happy to have offline meetings with anyone or groups of anyone, or party groups, or anything else to see how we can take forward some of the suggestions that we all agree with, and how we can minimise our differences and maximise our agreement in order to get the housing supply that Wales needs. Diolch yn fawr. 

I call on Mark Isherwood to reply to the debate. Mark Isherwood. 

Diolch, Llywydd.

David Melding started this debate by quoting from a 2004 speech warning of a housing crisis, yet here we are tackling a broken housing market with consequent social injustice. It reminds me of being party to those debates in 2004, backing a campaign that united the charitable and commercial sectors in housing across Wales, warning that there would be a housing crisis if urgent action wasn't taken. As I said at the time, housing is a key vehicle for community and social regeneration. It's a regret that now, all these years later, people are now acknowledging that after so much opportunity was missed.

He referred to the devastating effects on young families, older people and homelessness, the need for a new political consensus to solve the crisis, and referred to the precedent set after world war two, to the UK Government target of 300,000 homes annually, to the demand for housing or, particularly, the housing demand increase, the launch of the Welsh Conservative housing strategy, 'Housing a Nation', last month, for which David deserves huge credit—thank you, David—and the recognition that we need capital investment and borrowing if we're going to take this forward, reflecting both the report that David has steered but also the Shelter report referring to England.

Leanne Wood highlighted a report showing the need for up to 12,000 homes per annum, with 37 per cent in the social sector. That actually reflects numerous reports over several years, all indicating similar levels of need. But, in fact, as you indicated, we've been building fewer than half that level.

Nick Ramsay referred to a shortage of adaptable and lifetime homes, and also the key role played by non-profit housing associations in that as in much else, how house prices are six times the average earnings, about the wasted capacity in the estimated 27,000 empty homes in Wales, and the need for sustainable housing to be within sustainable communities.

Mike Hedges referred to the barriers to first-time buyers and to renting—an increase in single-person and pensioner households. He said housing associations were not making up the loss in council homes although, of course, by 1997 they had been, and mentioned the need for more council housing, now possible with the UK Government lifting the borrowing cap and with them allowing exit from the housing revenue account meaning that proceeds from tenants can now also be used to build new council houses. But, as the First Minister said to me yesterday in response to my questions, that must be in partnership with housing associations to ensure that we get the best bang for the buck and also the maximum community regeneration impact. This isn't just bricks and mortar; this is about lives and communities.

Mark Reckless talked about the impact of house price increases and the need to encourage construction and growth.

Gareth Bennett said that the Welsh Government target would not meet demand and that we need a mixture of housing that's truly affordable.

Suzy Davies talked about the need to look at the type and location of housing, the need to enable right to buy, and now, thanks to the UK Government, be able to invest the proceeds in building new social houses, the use of the Help to Buy scheme to bring empty properties back into use as well as to build new houses, and the work of the homelessness charity Wallich with private landlords to tackle homelessness.

Hefin David talked about the need to incentivise development in areas not meeting demand, which is, of course, key.

And the Minister, Julie James—and I also welcome her to her new role and speaking to this for the first time in her new portfolio—mentioned the need to prioritise and work together, and the need to accept much, as she does, of the Welsh Conservative document. The role of the co-operative and community land trust model was referred to. In fact, if you look back, actually, to previous Assemblies, that has been taken forward, and you may want to look at what resulted. And the need to encourage small and medium enterprises, small builders, self-build, modular housing, and the priority being social housing delivery, which she said that Welsh Government had never lost sight of. Sadly, over the first decade of this century, the supply of new affordable housing by social housing providers in Wales fell by 73 per cent over the previous decade, which unfortunately indicates that pervious Welsh Governments did lose sight. So, let us, as I said many years ago in this Chamber in the context of the warnings about the housing crisis now with us, give housing a home in Wales once again, recognising, as I said earlier, this isn't just bricks and mortar; this is about better lives, healthier lives and rebuilding sustainable communities.     

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Therefore, we defer voting until voting time. 

Voting deferred until voting time.

I am going to move to voting time. Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will proceed. No. Right. Okay.