Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:49 pm on 15 September 2020.
Thank you, Llyr. I absolutely hear what you say. There are number of issues there, aren't there? It's not just second homes; it's about having affordable homes across all the communities of Wales so that our young people can stay in the communities that they grew up in and they can contribute to Wales from those communities. We certainly don't want to drain rural Wales into our cities as a result of people being priced out of the housing market.
So, we are actively investigating a number of things. One of them is certainly to just up the number of social homes we build across the communities of Wales and to make sure that those homes are accessible to local people in the right way. So, we will be working with local authorities to do that. The other thing is to put the disincentives in for second homes and to learn the lessons of that. So, we have been looking closely at some of the things that have happened elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Some schemes have been less successful than they had hoped for. The one in Cornwall has been unsuccessful in some ways, so we will be learning the lessons of that. What I'd like to do, though, Llyr, is invite a number of Members who I know have an interest in this to come to a discussion with me to discuss a number of ideas. As I said earlier in response to another—I think it was Delyth—I don't have all the good ideas in Wales, so I'd be really grateful if a number of people who are interested in that would be kind enough to come and have a discussion with us about all of the ideas that we'd like to take forward.
And then the last thing is that I am in discussion—it's not my portfolio, but I am in discussion with Rebecca Evans about the threshold at which you can switch to business rents. You'll know that we changed the grant-level conditions through the pandemic and I would like to look in more detail at what would happen if we upped the levels completely for that, and I know that's something that yourself and Siân Gwenllian and a number of others have raised on a number of occasions, and no doubt there's several of you now saying, 'I've raised it as well,' but a number of people have raised it with me in the Chamber, so I'd be very happy to do that. So, Llyr, if you want to drop me an e-mail, perhaps we could set that meeting up.