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.