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.