5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Housing, Poverty and Communities

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:34 pm on 15 September 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:34, 15 September 2020

Diolch, Delyth. Thank you very much for that suite of comments and questions. Just on the human right to housing, we are very much working alongside a number of organisations looking at how that might work. I just want to remind Members once more, as I constantly remind myself, that the Assembly, as it then was, passed the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, and what a groundbreaking piece of legislation that is. And that actually goes quite a long way to doing some of the things that you mentioned there. But we have got some other things that we need to do. For example, the renting homes Act means that anybody renting a home, including social landlords, has to have a house that's fit for human habitation. And I'd just like to remind the Chamber that, of course, the Tories at Westminster level refused to put 'fit for human habitation' into their legislation, so that just shows you how low the benchmark is. So, we have done that—we've already moved that forward.