5. Will the Minister make a statement on the future of the Help to Buy scheme in Wales? OAQ54281

I am not able to make an announcement about the future of Help to Buy in Wales until there is clarity about the level of consequential we'll receive from the UK Government. I do hope that we will have that clarity in the autumn.

The UK Government made a statement about the future of Help to Buy at least in England last autumn, and I think the lack of certainty is becoming more and more difficult for house builders in terms of their planning, whichever way the decision goes. I wonder, as the Welsh Government funds this scheme, whether it expects to make a profit on the eventual resale of houses, or whether it's concerned that first-time buyers may be putting themselves at risk of negative equity through paying so much more for new homes.

No, I don't share those concerns. We know that some 6 per cent of all completions on Help to Buy were, in fact, by first-time buyers, and they have proved an important element of the additional 20,000 affordable homes, with many of them being at affordable rent. The number of purchases at the scheme's inception stood at 8,731, and we've got another 827 applications for loans in the pipeline, and there have been 5,645 purchases during this term of Government. So, we can see, Llywydd, that this is a popular scheme. If we are to announce a further tranche, and I will not be able to do that one way or the other, then, there will certainly be some changes to the scheme to reflect some of the climate emergency issues that we've discussed in this Chamber, but I'm just not in a position to say one way or the other at this point in time.