Can I very much welcome the Minister’s statement? The Minister has identified the four key challenges: not building enough houses to meet the need; the climate change emergency; an aging population; and not enough qualified building trades people. I think it’s unfortunate that we're in a part of the world today where this, which should be the key issue that we're talking about, will, almost certainly, I think, be overshadowed by other events, when this is what really does affect the lives of people and the people that I represent.

Can I say that quality is most important, and it’s important to learn the lessons of history? The Minister, like me, remembers the steel houses, the high alumina cement, the other non-traditional builds that didn't last 25 years. So, I think it is important that the quality is there so that the houses do last.

We know that the private sector will not meet housing demand. If they did, it would affect both house prices and the profits of the company, so they like to keep demand up and only meet part of it in order to maximise their profits. That’s not a criticism of them, but that is the business model that private sector building in this country uses.

We need more social housing. Does the Minister agree with me that the only way to meet demand is for councils to build more houses using local trades people at the scale of the 1950s and 1960s, which is the only time since the second world war and one of only two occasions in the whole history of this country when houses were built at the scale necessary to meet demand?

And I would also like to ask about co-operative housing. I think that there is a role for co-operative housing. We are very poor at it in this country, not just in Wales, but right across the United Kingdom, and it’s something that in many other parts of the world is the norm—parts of the world that vary from the United States of America and Canada to Sweden. So, it’s not the political will. And for anybody who watches any American tv programmes, when they talk about going to the co-op, they mean co-operative housing. And it’s unfortunate that we don't seem to have got that mentality across in this country, so what further can be done to increase the amount of co-operative housing available in Britain?