We now move on to item 8, which is the Plaid Cymru debate on building social housing in Wales, and I call on Leanne Wood to move the motion.

Motion NDM6978 Rhun ap Iorwerth

To propose that the National Asssembly for Wales:

Believes that there needs to be a substantial increase in the scale of building social housing in Wales.

Motion moved.

Diolch. I'm pleased to open this debate on a motion that should be non-controversial. I'm going to start by repeating something I said in the Conservative debate on housing a couple of months ago. 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 estimates that we need between 3,300 and 4,200 additional units of social housing every year—just 850 homes when we need over 4,000. The gap is absolutely staggering. Nobody disputed those figures then and I don't expect anyone to dispute those figures today. So, instead, my colleagues and I want to focus on why we haven't been able to meet an aspiration that apparently everybody wants.

First of all, I think we need some clarification on what exactly we're talking about. Too often, we've seen the term 'affordable housing' used interchangeably with 'social housing', hence the Welsh Government's claim of being on track for delivering 20,000 affordable homes. Currently, we're in the position where 'affordable' is defined within the context of technical advice note 2. This definition also includes homes owned through shared equity schemes, including Help to Buy. This means that, since the 2016 election when the target of 20,000 affordable homes was brought in, the 3,458 homes sold through Help to Buy since will be counted towards that target. Now, this is a particular issue when we consider that 1,390 of those homes—that's 40 per cent of those homes—were sold for over £200,000. There's clearly a misuse, therefore, of the term 'affordable'. How many first-time buyers can really save up and afford to buy a home at £200,000? So, that's why we've proposed to create a target for 20,000 new social housing homes in a Plaid Cymru term of Government, to separate social housing out from the private sector. We of course want to make private sector housing more affordable for both people renting and for those who want to buy, and our housing paper contains many ideas for doing just that. But today, I'm focusing on social housing in the proper sense of the term, to refer to homes owned by housing associations and local authorities. And we badly need more. 

The rise in homelessness over the past decade is something that has been noted in this Senedd on numerous occasions. We have, of course, debated the need for a housing first policy to ensure that everyone gets a home and that we can end rough-sleeping. And, of course, there's a comprehensive plan for doing that already written by Crisis. That plan is reliant upon building more social housing and the reality is, though, that austerity has hindered the sector's ability to build more social housing. Social security cuts, in particular the cumulative impact of housing benefit changes, have changed the business model of housing associations. They've faced reduced incomes from rent, which may have jeopardised investment in more homes. They've also had to face increased administration costs in chasing more arrears, and, of course, the substantial costs of rehousing people who've been impacted by the bedroom tax. In fact, housing associations put the cost of dealing with just the disabled people who are affected by the bedroom tax at some £40 million. No wonder we didn't have the investment in social housing that we needed.

But there is a wider impact of austerity on availability of housing as well, and that has made the planning of the required public services needed to serve new housing developments far more difficult. Let's imagine two proposals for development are given to a local community. The first is a properly planned housing estate with a mixture of social housing and private sector housing. It's accompanied by significant investment in transport, green spaces, and supported by a new school and a doctor's surgery. The second proposal is for an estate built by one of the large developers, with a small quota reserved for 'affordable housing' and a joke section 106; there are few green spaces, and the previous performance of the developer—which, of course, can't be regarded as a material matter in planning law—suggests that the estate may well end up being unfinished for years, parts of it a muddy building site with unadopted roads, and the existing public services in the community will simply have to cope, because there is no money to invest to accommodate the new community. Which of these proposals do you think will attract the support of the community—

Are you giving way?

—and which of these proposals will attract opposition? Did you want to say something?

Yes, thank you. Even if the 106 agreement is very good at the beginning, what you often or nearly always see is the developer coming back and saying, 'I'm not going to make enough money with this 106 agreement—can we change it? Can we reduce the number of houses that are affordable and can we not build these things, because we can't afford it, because our profit will probably be down to £75,000 per property?'

I agree, and that's exactly why I described these section 106 agreements as a complete joke. That's exactly why they are a joke. 

Our point is, as well, that austerity has meant that we've seen even more of the examples that I gave in the latter example there over the past decade than we have seen of the former example, with predictable results and an ever-increasing distrust between communities and local planners. The statistics on house building show that it hasn't delivered more social housing. Now, the current planning system and the limited finance available for local authorities is simply not delivering what we need. My colleagues will elaborate on this further, but it's quite clear that relying on affordable housing commitments, or on those joke section 106 agreements with housing developers, is not delivering for us. So, we have to take the shackles off housing associations and local authorities, and we have to let them borrow substantially more to create new housing.

Borrowing for the finance of new housing is one of the least risky forms of public sector debt, and it's preferable to having our pension funds invested in, say, for example, fossil fuels. But we have to also avoid the mistakes of the past, in creating ghettos of social housing that are separate from other forms of housing. So, we are proposing an overhaul of the development of the planning process. We currently have a process of allocating sites for development, and then a laissez-faire attitude towards who builds them, and having no consideration for the kinds of public services and infrastructure required to make communities sustainable and work correctly. I keep saying section 106 agreements are a joke, and most estates remain a mess for several years, with unadopted roads and unfinished work—a nightmare for the people living around them. This is an approach that often alienates communities from the process and builds up problems in the future, especially given the long period of austerity that we've had.

So, we propose a different approach. We propose a co-operative approach to planning in which developers, housing associations and local authorities should work collaboratively on new developments and the LDP process as a whole, with both suitable locations identified and the public services required to make communities work. There will be a target for any new housing developments to have at least 40 per cent social housing. Now, by that, we don't mean 'Stick the social housing on one side of the road and the private sector housing on the other'. We mean a genuinely mixed community, supported by good public services. It's an approach that is, I'm afraid, incompatible with austerity, but one compatible with meeting the actual housing needs of Wales, not just the needs of the developers.

First, can I welcome this debate? It's the second debate we've had on housing since Christmas. And can I just say how pleased I am to start talking about housing? Because I think it's one of the most important things. After food and drink, the next important thing for people's life is housing. So, I think it really is important that we get around to talking about this. Hopefully, the next debate will be on a Welsh Government house-building strategy, involving the building of large numbers of council houses.

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 of 1945 to 1980—during that period, we saw a huge growth in council estates and the building of a large number of new estates in urban areas. We also saw the growth of owner occupation and the start of the building of large private estates, again predominantly in the larger urban areas.

Council housing has declined through the sale of a large number of houses and the failure to build new ones. There has also been a substantial growth in housing association properties, but not enough to make up for the decline in council-house building. For those people taking a deep interest in politics and elections, if you go and look at 'The British General Election of February 1974', the book by Butler and Kavanagh, you will see it looked at the number of houses that were social housing—or 'council housing' was the term they used then, because nearly all the housing was that—and there were a large number of constituencies where over half the housing was council housing, and, in Scotland, and you had constituencies where between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of the housing was council housing. It was the norm.

Council housing has declined—the sale of large numbers and the failure to build new ones. There has also been a substantial growth in housing association properties, but nowhere near enough to fill the gap of the decline in council house building. As a consequence of benefit changes, demand has increased for smaller-sized accommodation. Since 1980, we have seen almost a complete end to council house building, the growth of owner occupation, which now appears to have stalled, and the growth of housing associations into major landlords. For those people who remember back in the past, housing associations used to be small, local organisations providing housing. Now, one stretches from Newport down to Pembrokeshire, one stretches from Cardiff down to the edge of Wales, and one covers almost the whole of north Wales and mid Wales. 

We've seen a reduction in the average number of adults living in each property. There's been a large growth of single-person households and a huge reduction in family sizes. The sale of council housing had a serious effect on the housing market. It reduced the supply of council housing and increased demand for both housing association properties and for privately rented properties. That's gone into a vicious circle. There's money to be made in privately rented accommodation: people buy it, it pushes up house prices, it makes people less likely to be able to get accommodation.

There have been 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 and, assisted by Government incentives, builders could offer affordable home ownership to people on middle to low incomes. If we were to do the same, it would involve ending all planning rules. I don't think anybody in this room would want to see the end of all planning rules.

The second was the decades after the second world war, when publicly funded council housing accounted for roughly half of all homes built. What we've now got is a situation where we need to go back that—to building large numbers of council houses. Housing associations aren't going to meet the gap. When people talk about social housing, too often they're talking about housing associations. We need councils building houses. We've seen the beginning of it in places like Swansea. There has been some small-scale development of council housing, but nowhere near what was happening between 1945 and 1979. I don't think the equivalent of one year's development in Swansea has been built in the whole of Wales in any year since the last 10 years.

There are large obstacles to a renaissance of council-house building, including the obvious one of money. Claire Bennie, an architect and housing developer, formerly of the housing association Peabody, said that councils should be allowed to borrow more against the long-term value of their developments, and I fully agree with her. That's what we do. When you go to buy a house, you borrow against the long-term value of your house, and that's what a mortgage is. Why can't councils be allowed to do the same?

Unless we have large scale council-house building, we will not solve the housing crisis. House prices will go up. It's in the interest of developers not to build enough houses, because it keeps prices high. Housing associations can help in developing social housing, and I would like to see a role for housing associations in bringing empty properties back into use. But, really, there's only one answer: substantial building of council houses.

For many years now the accepted wisdom was that market housing built by developers would deliver the affordable housing needed to meet demand. Now, on these benches we want to challenge that, because, for all the promises made and targets set, delivery hasn't matched the demand. In fact delivery—as we've heard from Leanne, delivery of affordable housing hasn’t matched the numbers that have been granted permission over the past decade. Stats Wales report that local authorities have granted planning permission for 13,355 affordable houses, but only 6,746 were actually built—just over 50 per cent. In some authorities, the figure's even worse. In Wrexham, for example, just 16 per cent of those granted planning permission have been delivered.

Councils with diminishing resources are reliant on private developers delivering affordable housing targets. So, why are so few of these affordable houses being delivered? In some cases, as we've heard, there's no doubt developers try to wriggle out of affordable housing provision, typically 25 per cent on larger developments, by claiming they're not viable. They will claim, and are backed by planning inspectors, that a 15 to 20 per cent profit is what makes housing viable. I'm sure many other industries would love to be able to post a 15 to 20 per cent profit.

In other cases, the market housing just isn't built, and so much needed affordable housing also isn't built, leaving thousands of people stuck on housing waiting lists in overcrowded accommodation or among the hidden homeless. In a few cases, affordable housing turns out to have clauses requiring large deposits that make them then unaffordable for the very people they're designed for. It's clear from the statistics that I just quoted that the current preferred delivery mechanism for so-called affordable housing isn't working. Open-market housing isn't the way to deliver affordable housing.

It's also clear that relying on developers to lead on housing means that communities are often an afterthought in our planning process. Local development plans should be about community-led development, not developer-led communities. They should also be ensuring that the necessary community infrastructure, as Leanne said—whether it's roads, schools, health and social provision—is developed in tandem with any large-scale development, and not as an afterthought, if at all. Health boards aren’t even statutory consultees on planning matters, despite the huge impact new populations would clearly have on hard-pressed GP surgeries, on A&E departments and on hospital services. Again, without the right provision, building new homes in some areas can be disastrous. The limitations of the social housing grant and other financial pressures mean that housing associations are not delivering affordable housing as they once were.

One chink of light is that, for the first time in a generation, as we have heard, some councils in Wales are starting to build council houses again. Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Flintshire and Wrexham, among others, have started to replenish depleted housing stocks, but, after decades without any new builds, it's a painfully slow process, and not fully tackling the desperate need for housing in many of our communities. It also doesn't address the fact that half of our authorities no longer have any council housing, due to the policy of stock transfer undertaken over a decade ago. I wonder how those councils that transferred feel now that the capacity to build new houses is being made available for those that retained their housing stock. One underrated but important feature is that this is not only a building programme, but is also a buy-back programme, so that former council houses are bought back into council ownership.

In some areas there are limited funds to renovate housing. There are thousands of empty homes across Wales, many owned by people without the means to renovate so that they can be let or sold on. A small-scale scheme exists where councils provide loans of up to £50,000 to do this kind of work. The loan is repaid when the house is sold or let, so the pot is maintained, but this needs officers to push and liaise with house owners to get the work done, and, with limited resource, this kind of work is not happening quickly enough or at all.

So, it's clear there's more than one way to tackle the social housing crisis, but we need to scale up the available funding to ensure that initiatives deliver. I endorse the call today for greater investment in social housing, council housing, to meet demand in our communities and to redress the balance in our housing stock. The past decade has seen a dramatic rise in private rented housing, and in the worst cases these are little better than slum landlords letting out rooms for £90 to £100 a week. The lack of good-quality, affordable housing has allowed these types of landlords to profit from people's misery. A home isn't just a building. It provides a roof over people's heads. It provides security and safety. A secure home enables families to plan for the future, it reduces stress and reliance on health and social services. We need to see beyond the bricks and mortar and understand the wider impact of good-quality affordable housing in our country. 

I'm very pleased this debate is being held this afternoon and I thank Plaid Cymru for moving it, and I think we do need to state that social housing is an essential component of the housing supply we need. It has frequently in our history led great innovation, it's liberated people and given them homes fit to live in, and it is time we restated the value of the principle of social housing. I also welcome the scale that is indicated by Plaid Cymru in terms of what we will need in the future, because it's very close to our own projections and what we've called for in the 2020s.

We are building at the lowest rate, really, since the 1920s. We are well below—[Interruption.] I will give way in a moment. We are well below, perhaps even just barely over half, the historical trend. We have only just over a quarter of the number of homes that we built in the great housing surges of the 1950s and 1960s, so we do need to talk about scale and building many, many more social homes and homes in general. I'll give way. 

Thank you. I welcome your comments about scale, and you said that the figures that we are talking about are broadly in line with the figures that you've come up with. Can you clarify whether your figures are about affordable homes, or are we talking about social housing?

First of all, there's evidence out there, so these are not figures that I've plucked out of thin air, or that you have. I know that you've also been greatly influenced, as I was three years ago, by the report of Professor Holmans. And my broad assessment is that we need about 40 per cent non-market homes and 60 per cent market, which coincidentally seems to be what you're calling for—you said 20,000 social homes in a five-year term if Plaid Cymru is elected at the next election, and, by my calculation, that leaves 30,000 to be provided by the market, of which some of that will also be assisted buying by the various schemes. But I prefer to talk about market provision and non-market. Social is clearly the non-market element of that, but a 40:60 split does seem to me a reasonable estimate. And, as Mike indicated earlier, there have been times indeed when we've built more non-market homes than market. So, we need solutions; it's pointless getting hooked up on ideology. We need homes that people can afford, whether they're buying them or whether they are renting them. 

I think, perhaps, where I might differ from some of your emphasis, though I don't think this divides us at all, is I think the old model of just allowing councils to build vast estates—in fairness to you, you did say you didn't think that was an appropriate model and you want mixed tenure and probably smaller schemes. But I do think you need to look at housing associations, because they are the principal resource we have at the moment, but also remember there are many people now who will not get the best home or the home they deserve, the home that their family needs and the space their children will require. They will not get that, despite being, from a historical perspective, way above the threshold for social housing, because the market has driven up the price of housing so much that we now have people on really what, in previous generations, would be regarded as quite high incomes, and those people, I think, are going to need other models. Co-operative models are very important, I think, and are used internationally. Leanne talked about pension funds investing in this sort of provision, quite probably—larger apartments for family living, but rented long term so that you're not, every two or three years, worrying whether you'll still be able to stay in your home. So, we need lots and lots of approaches.

But the one thing I think is really important is that we move towards a consensus. We've been arguing for too long on this, and the Welsh Government doesn't have a great record in terms of house building—I should whisper this bit now and I hope my colleagues are not listening—but the UK Government hasn't had a great record either. I'd certainly say, since the financial crisis, in the UK, we've simply not been building enough houses, and we need to start to do that.

Can I just finish by saying that there are some failures in the market, without any question? The market, in general, has not given us all the answers we need, and there are some poor developers out there, but they're not all poor. This thought that all these new private estates are somehow a blot on the landscape, that they don't have good infrastructure, and that the planning authorities have not put in school provision: I mean, that is not typical of the type of development we get in the UK and in Wales under both Governments. We have a very tightly designed planning system and it does broadly deliver, but I do take the point that there have been cases where there's been really quite poor practice, and we certainly need more developers in there, SMEs using smaller sites, and more community sign-ups so that people realise that their own communities are going to benefit from people having access to decent housing. I thank you for indulging me, Deputy Presiding Officer. 

It's fine. Siân Gwenllian. 

Thank you very much. It is clear to us in Plaid Cymru that we need more social housing or council houses—whatever we call them, we know what we’re talking about. In my own area, there are 2,000 families on the waiting list in Gwynedd for social housing. My surgeries are full of people living in unacceptable conditions in private rented accommodation that is damp, too small or expensive to heat, leading to fuel poverty, or families come to me and they have to share homes with their parents or other relatives or friends. There are too many people in homes that are too small for their needs, and this in turn impacts their general well-being and the education of the children also suffers.

I’m going to focus on two aspects this afternoon. We have a planning system in Wales that does work to the benefit of major housing developers. Yes, they need to commit to building a few affordable homes under section 106 agreements and we’ve already heard about those and how developers can remove themselves from those commitments. But even if they stick to those commitments, we’re talking about only a handful of additional homes being built as a result of those agreements. We need a planning system in Wales that places local needs and the housing needs of local people at the heart of the policy. Plaid Cymru has recently adopted a comprehensive set of policies that would do just that—place the needs for construction of appropriate homes in appropriate places as a priority.

In Gwynedd, those who have the greatest need for housing are often on low wages and have uncertain working conditions. This is a huge barrier, and one that can’t be overcome with simple solutions, namely just by increasing the supply of housing substantially. The supply has to be of the right kind and the homes have to be in the right places.

Too many large expensive houses in some areas mean that local families are priced out of the market, and this, of course, has implications for the Welsh language in my own area as local young people have to move out. On the other hand, a shortage of the right kind of housing also means that local people are disadvantaged.

An increase in the number of second homes also prices local people out of the market in an increasing number of communities. In order to seek to address this problem, eight local authorities now charge a council tax premium on second homes. This became possible under the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. But, unfortunately, almost 800 of the owners of these second homes in Gwynedd alone have found a loophole where they can avoid paying any taxes to the public purse. They register their second homes as small businesses, and, as a result of the anomaly in the system, they don’t have to pay a penny in tax because they can get business rates relief. Now, I’ve described this as a scandal and I’ve been raising this issue with the Government for quite some time. I do understand that there is a review in the pipeline, and I would urge the Government to include in that review this loophole that I’ve just mentioned so that we can find a resolution to this problem.

Thank you. All it really needs is for the Government to abolish small business rates relief on houses. 

That’s one way of dealing with it, and since I’ve raised this issue, I’ve been surprised by the number of people who have been in touch with me and have proposed various solutions to the problem. You’ve mentioned one—there are other people who have other solutions. So, this is a problem that can be sorted out. What we need is desire in Government to actually tackle the problem. It’s the Government that should lead in finding a solution. To date, that desire hasn’t been particularly apparent to me, but I do very much hope that we can have some detailed discussions on what exactly can be done.

There is something wrong with a situation where 2,000 people are living in poor conditions whilst 800 of 5,000 owners of second homes in the same county are playing the system for their own benefit and avoiding paying council tax. That funding—a total of over £1 million per year—as well as the council house premium, which would bring additional millions, could be an important contribution towards building more appropriate housing for local people in Gwynedd.

Thank you. Can I now call the Minister for Housing and Local Government—Julie James?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I very much welcome this debate, despite throwing my papers all over the floor in an unseemly fashion, so I apologise for that. [Laughter.] Thank you, Vaughan.

We're absolutely committed, in the Welsh Government, to the provision of social housing by councils as well as by registered social landlords. We know there is an urgent need for additional homes for social rent across Wales. I'm not going to quibble with the figures. We know that there are a lot needed, and they are in the thousands and not the hundreds, so rather than argue about individual numbers it's definitely in the thousands, and we certainly want to acknowledge that. Just to be absolutely clear, providing additional social housing is a fundamental priority for this Government, and that's why I'm very happy to support Plaid Cymru's motion today.

I welcome contributions from all Members today. All of us—I have 'most of us' written here, but, actually, I'm happy to be able to say that all of us will share the aim of creating more social housing for rent. There are important questions of how we ensure the right funding, the right design and the right location, and I've certainly been very eager to listen to the contributions very carefully in today's debate to pick up all of the ideas and make sure that we can take them forward. I'm very happy to say that I haven't heard anything in today's debate that I'm not happy to run with, and I would very much welcome detailed discussions with all of you about how we can get some of these ideas to really run.

I have seen, and I know that everybody in the Chamber has seen for themselves, the impact a good-quality, safe and affordable place to live can have on someone, particularly someone who's potentially vulnerable or struggling with different challenges, but, actually, just on everyone—it's a fundamental need, and I think it was Mike Hedges who said that we need food, drink and a place to live, and that's absolutely right.

Social housing can provide not only quality homes but the support needed to ensure people can sustain a tenancy and thrive in it. It can positively impact on health, mental health and education, which is why, in Wales, we've never moved away from support for social housing, ever since the Assembly was in existence and, indeed, before that. This is why we've set a target for the delivery of affordable homes in the previous term of government, which we achieved, and we've extended the target to 20,000 homes in this term.

As Leanne Wood said, the 20,000 target does include schemes aimed at helping people into home ownership, principally the Help to Buy and Rent to Own schemes, but it also has a very large proportion of social rented homes in it. Leanne Wood might be surprised to find that I don't actually very much disagree with what she said. We have included Help to Buy because accessing home ownership has become very difficult to achieve for many in the last 15 to 20 years. David Melding talked about the market forces that have driven some of that, and we've had to respond to that.

But homes for social rent make up very much the largest proportion of the 20,000 target, and I'd be very keen to see that target extended now that we've got slightly different conditions in place. I'm confident we'll deliver that commitment in partnership with local authorities and registered social landlords, who have made a record investment of £1.7 billion in housing during this Assembly term, which is a significant sum that is having a huge impact in the delivery of social housing.

In 2017-18, over half of the new affordable homes built in Wales were delivered with capital grant from the Welsh Government. The vast majority of those were, in fact, for social rent, and we are convinced that that's the right priority. Homes for social rent also require a higher rate of public subsidy than other forms of affordable housing, but they're essential to meet the range of housing need across our communities, and that's clearly a consensual position in the Assembly, and I'm delighted that it is so.

Some housing can be made more affordable for some people by subsidising housing for sale, and, actually, our Help to Buy scheme is very different to the profiles you see in England. So, a large amount more of it is for first-time buyers—about 80 per cent, in fact. We deliberately have had a policy that allows people to get into houses that they want. The price of those houses is an interesting thing, and I don't actually fundamentally disagree with what Leanne Wood was saying about how we measure that. But what we actually need to to do is just build an awful lot more social housing. So, what we're really delighted to see is that, finally, the UK Government has come to its senses and has realised that having artificial caps on the amount of money that you can borrow to build housing is not a sensible thing to do. I think David Melding would agree with me that, actually, raising the cap in order to allow councils to borrow to invest in housing is a good thing. I think you more or less said that in your speech. Clearly, the UK Government has finally seen the light, if you like, on that.

So, we are looking to work really hard with our councils across Wales to build council houses at scale, and, where the council has externalised its housing stock, to assist, then, with helping their RSL with their prudential borrowing.

I'm very grateful to the Minister for taking an intervention. Would you agree with me that it's essential that these new builds are of high quality and that we did have, in the second half of the previous century, some very low-quality social housing built, very unpleasant to live in? I think that's also contributed to the stigma around renting, which I think we would all agree we need to lift. We need to be building social housing that's of such good quality that people are proud to live in them as lifetime homes.

Absolutely, and in doing so, we can remove a number of other issues. As I said, we can remove health problems, mental health problems, we can remove fuel poverty issues, debt issues and so on by building housing of the right standard. And frankly, we can contribute to not killing our own planet by building houses that leak heat out into the air for no reason and so on. So, there are a number of things that we can do with good-quality housing, and we need to step up to that plate. Now that the UK Government has seen fit to change some of the parameters by which we can produce the capital in order to do that, then we need to get on with doing that at pace and at scale. Hannah Blythyn and myself have been touring the councils, as is traditional for people who take over the local government portfolio, and in every council we've met so far, and in the WLGA, we've been greeted with huge enthusiasm across the political spectrum to get on with building social housing at pace and scale. So, it remains for us to get the right sets of rules in place around asset management and use of land and so on to enable that to happen.

I'm very pleased, Deputy Presiding Officer, to tell the Assembly that we're working very hard, for example, on changing the rules about using public land for social housing across the piece in Wales. Some of you may be familiar with a study in Cwm Taf health board that the First Minister commissioned when he was in a previous job—I can't remember which one; public services, I think—which utilises the Government GPS portal Lle to map out the public land across the health board area. We're really looking forward to pushing that out across Wales so that we can see what the availability of public land is to take away some of the capital cost of being able to put social housing—and other forms of tenure.

Various people around the Chamber today, Deputy Presiding Officer, have mentioned other forms of tenure, and we're very keen to see that. Forgive me; I can't remember which Assembly Member said this, but the whole point about this is to make a sustainable community. So, not to have ghettos of single-tenure areas but to have complete mixed tenures, sustainable communities, and mixed in as well. I think it was Leanne Wood who said, 'Not with a road dividing the middle of it but a mixed-in sustainable community'. And in that regard, we've got a number of other pieces of work going on. So, for example, we're spending £90 million on our innovative housing programme, looking at new ways of delivering homes. The £105 million integrated care fund is just beginning to support accommodation-led solutions to social care alongside housing and health programmes, and, of course, we’ve got the £134 million this year in our social housing grant programme. And, Deputy Presiding Officer, the thing that I want to emphasise by that is that they are not separate programmes—they are programmes designed to produce different kinds of housing, but there’s nothing to stop those being in a sustainable community together.

And we also have our innovative self-build programme. I was very struck by what Siân Gwenllian said about local people being driven out by second home ownership, and we’re very keen to ensure that authorities can look to build social housing in small plots in village settlement areas and so on, which would allow people to access social housing, and also ladder housing if you like—help on to the ladder to do that.

Just to paint a picture of the seriousness of the situation, it's estimated that a third of the houses sold in my constituency in the last year were sold as second homes. That has a clear and detrimental effect on the local housing market.

It does. Second homes can bring wealth with them as well, but we also need to ensure that local people can have decent homes to live in. I'm very keen to work with you on a number of the things that were raised today—I won't go through all of them or the Deputy Presiding Officer's seriously going to lose patience with me. But, clearly, what this debate has shown is that there are a large number of innovate things we could do to get our councils and our social landlords to start to deliver, at pace and at scale, the social housing that Wales very badly needs. Diolch.

Thank you. I call on Leanne Wood to reply to the debate.

Diolch i bawb. Thanks to everybody for their contributions, especially those supporting the premise of our argument. I’m particularly grateful to the Minister for being so open to so many of our suggestions. I also welcome the suggestion on using the business rates system to tackle the problem of second homes. It’s not rocket science, and it’s actually something that could be done straight away.

Now, as well as increasing social housing, we propose that four other sources of supply, which our housing paper proposed, should be used to help increase housing stock in the private and social sectors, which I hope proves that we’re not being ideological about this.

Firstly, in recognition of the demographic challenges our health and social care system will face, we propose creating a Scandinavian-style social care villages system that will both provide social care and help people to live independently in suitable accommodation. Again, financing this is a good use of borrowing powers and it will also stimulate the foundational economy.

Secondly, we want to encourage more co-operative models of housing that, in particular, could be used as intermediate housing or housing for specific groups of people as part of a housing first-type model.

Thirdly, we should be encouraging smaller self-build and eco home-style developments, and kick-start what is only going to become a growing industry in the future. Again, it’s worth comparing and contrasting the quality and standards of housing in eco villages with the poor practices that we’ve seen in some new-build estates that have been referenced here this afternoon.

Finally, we want a far greater effort at bringing empty properties back into use. It appears that the Welsh Government has stopped requiring local authorities to report on this, because the most recent figures are for 2016, but they show 26,500 empty properties, and that the trend is going up. Yet, despite having the powers to impose council tax premiums on empty homes, as a result of the 2014 housing Act, our written questions found that only nine out of the 22 local authorities intend to apply a premium on empty homes. In fact, our written questions also showed that 14 local authorities—more than half—intend to provide a council tax discount to empty homes.

Now, the observant among you may have noticed that those sums add up to 23 local authorities, which either means that the Welsh Government has supplied incorrect information to us, or that there’s a local authority somewhere that is both giving a discount on empty homes and charging a premium on empty homes, which does seem somewhat strange, though legally possible, I suppose, depending on how long a property is empty. But it does illustrate that these powers are not being used, and our information is that, sometimes, officers aren’t even aware that they’re able to impose a council tax premium.

So, clearly, there’s a communication problem here and, clearly, there's a delivery problem as well, given how various housing Ministers have pledged to tackle this problem of empty homes. This is for a policy that doesn't cost any money and could be done tomorrow, so if the Government fails to achieve that, how on earth can it be trusted to deliver expensive and transformative projects? 

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36. 

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.