4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's housing policy? OAQ54246

Llywydd, our ambition is for everyone to have a decent home that is affordable, safe and secure. That is why we are tackling homelessness in all its forms, providing support to help households maintain their tenancies and committed to significant social housing building here in Wales.

First Minister, homelessness and rough-sleeping are major problems, and obviously many years of UK Tory Government austerity have had a grave impact on our public services and on vulnerable people in our communities. And it is a cumulative impact year on year, so, in trying to counter that, I do believe that Welsh Government's Housing First policy is an important part of the necessary and the right approach, and the pilot areas, I believe, are very welcome. But we do need to have the appropriate accommodation available right across Wales if Housing First is to be rolled out across the length and breadth of our country. So, I wonder if you could offer any reassurance that that necessary accommodation will be available throughout Wales, and, if so, when it would be in place.

Well, Llywydd, I want to thank John Griffiths for an important question. He's right to say that there is no more visible sign of the impact of a decade of austerity than the on-the-street homelessness that we see today, and which, in my earlier lifetime, was never seen at all. It's why we are putting £20 million more into housing homelessness services in this year alone. It's why the housing Minister has commissioned the chief officer of the charity Crisis to chair a group that is looking at the services that we will provide in Wales as we move into the second half of this year. Our ambition, as the Member knows, is that, where homelessness takes place, it should be rare, it should be brief, and it should be non-recurrent, and Housing First is a very important part of that. It's why we put £1.6 million specifically into that initiative during this financial year, and, as John Griffiths said in his supplementary question, the Housing First model requires two things. Of course, it requires accommodation, and accommodation is under severe pressure right across Wales, but it needs services as well. The people who are placed, in the Housing First model, directly into accommodation, are often people who will need support to make sure that they can settle and then sustain the tenancies that will be available to them, and that is the model that we are developing here in Wales.

First Minister, housing policy has a key role to play in tackling climate change. The UK Government announced yesterday that it will amend building regulations so that the installation of charge points for electrical vehicles will be required on all new housing developments. You may have realised that, when the Welsh Conservative group published its housing strategy, this was one of the things that we urged the Welsh Government to do. You've had some time to think about this, and obviously now you could emulate what is going to happen in England, which would be the first Government, I understand, to introduce this policy. But do you welcome this initiative, and will you be looking seriously to introduce that reform of building regulations in Wales also?

I thank David Melding for that, and, to agree with his opening point that housing policy and climate change are very closely related, we know that we will need a major retrofitting programme here in Wales to make housing built in a previous generation fit for the decarbonisation and climate change challenges that we face. The Welsh Government, using some of the £2 million that we agreed with Plaid Cymru as part of an earlier budget agreement, has been investing in public charging points in Wales. We're up to 800 this month. We had 670 as recently as April, so the number is increasing—not as rapidly as we might like, but definitely increasing. But the point that David Melding makes is right—most charging still happens domestically in people's own homes and the homes that we are building for the future will need to be equipped to make sure that they are equipped to offer this facility to people, and we are taking action to push that agenda forward and we'll look carefully to see what was announced yesterday.