So, it's a difficult, but sadly unavoidable, reality that our role as Welsh Government is limited with regard to what we can do about forcing the people who are responsible for having produced these buildings to step up to the plate. It's also true that the UK Government has announced funding for the removal of unsafe cladding from residential buildings taller than 18m—actually, it's all unsafe cladding, not just ACM. There was an earlier ACM fund, as you rightly pointed out, David. It's also true that we got consequential funding for some of that that we have not yet targeted at that.

I also want to say at this point that, at the point in time that we received that consequential funding, we were right in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and so all consequential funding was pushed towards that immediately. But I am committed to exploring ways forward, including the scope for innovative financial support to help fund remediation in some way that allows leaseholders to at least sleep safe in their beds, even if it affects their equity.

The difficulty, Mike, with financial transaction capital and the suggestion that you made—there is probably a way that we can do that, I'm pretty sure, but only by affecting the equity of the leaseholder, and that's one of the difficulties in trying to find a scheme that takes it forward that means that the leaseholder ends up with something at the end of it. So, we can do works in default, councils can do works in default, they can do all sorts of things, they can land charge the properties of the people living there, but those people end up with no equity. That solves the immediate fire-safety problem, which is worth doing, but it doesn't solve the problem that they've often invested all of their savings and some substantial effort and they end up with nothing. So, that doesn't seem to me to be a decent way forward. So, we need to look at something that allows them also to pursue claims against insurers and building companies and our intervention doesn't intervene in that. So, I'm very interested to see, and the officials will be following closely, what happens with the UK fund, just to make sure that we don't get into those difficulties. And I haven't been absolutely satisfied that that is going to happen, actually. 

So, it's important to understand that we're trying to do three things at once: we're trying to get the building to be fire safe, which is one thing; we're trying to sort out the difficulties of the leasehold itself and the way that the management company runs it, that's the other thing; and the third thing is we are trying to preserve some equity for the people who are in this situation through no fault of their own. That third thing is actually the most difficult of the things, though. I could fund the local authorities to do the works in default, but they would land charge the buildings and that would be the end of the equity. So, it's quite a difficult thing, and that works for the FTC as well. So, we've looked at quite a lot of these things. 

At this point, I'd just like to offer the thing I always say: I don't have all the ideas here. I'm very happy to work in conjunction with any other Member in the Chamber who's got any idea at all of what we could do. We're carefully watching the UK fund. They haven't spent very much of it yet, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I fear that it's going to take the equity away from the leaseholders, that's the truth. So, we'll see, but I have a lot of sympathy for the people. So, we are very much looking at it. We haven't stepped over it yet because I haven't got a solution that I personally think does the thing that people want. 

The other thing to say is that we need to change the system that produced this system. As David said, shamefully, Governments of all colours have failed to step up to this plate, so now we need to do that. We need a new regime to focus on areas we know need to improve, to establish clear lines of accountability, to create new roles and responsibilities for those that own and manage the relevant buildings, meaning there can be no doubt in the future where the buck stops. I also want to say at this point that although we're looking at the building safety regime from the point of view of who enforces it—so, the whole role of the building inspector and so on, which, Deputy Presiding Officer, I just don't have time to go into now; it's an hour's conversation, and we've had some presentations in the Senedd already on that—there is a big issue as well about making sure that people don't buy housing off single-purpose-vehicle companies. David, you said in your presentation that people bought them off trusted builders, people they knew, but actually they were often off single-purpose vehicles that bore the name of a big company but were shielded away from them by a legal mechanism. So, actually, going against the holding company for action has been problematic. So, we need a regime that prevents that from happening as well, so you don't form 'Melding and James building company inc.' just to build one building, and then collapse a single purpose vehicle and leave.

So, there are other issues at play here that are really complex. And your heart goes out to the leaseholders trying to navigate their way through who exactly it is that they're trying to sue, who exactly it is that holds the responsibility. In addition, many of those companies have either gone out of business, or they've gone bankrupt, or they've gone into administration, and there's a chain of passing on of the responsibility. It's one of the most complex things I've seen in quite a long legal career, so—you know, I've a lot of sympathy for it, but we do need to navigate our way through quite complex straits in trying to sort out what happens. 

The fire regime we've talked about a lot of times. We need to drive up the standards, improve industry competence, empower residents with enhanced rights and a stronger voice so that, as soon as they notice the defects, they have a way to bring that forward and that feeds into the system correctly. It's tempting to say: 'Look, just do it: just bring it forward, just sort it out', but, actually, we absolutely have to make sure that it's a stronger, more coherent regulatory system, with enforcement bodies able to take serious action knowing that that will happen.

It's about a cultural change as well. So, we all, I think, now accept that we need to move away from a culture that prioritises getting the building up at the cheapest possible cost, to getting the building up in a way that ensures the safety and quality of the way of life that people have in those buildings. So, I think that's a real big cultural shift. The changes—we cannot bring them forward overnight; this is not a superficial quick fix, as I've said many times, but a wholesale reform that brings about meaningful change and reassures residents that their homes are safe.

Because of COVID-19, I'm sorry to say that we now have lost our legislative programme, the beginnings of the legislative programme, for building safety that we would have had and that I introduced in the Senedd approximately a year ago now, I think, in response to a debate that David brought forward at that time. So, instead, we'll be putting a White Paper out. I think that White Paper will have cross-party support across the piece, and I would very much like to see it the manifestos of all the parties here in the Senedd so we knew it would be taken forward by whoever forms the Government next time. And we will certainly, Deputy Presiding Officer, be working to ensure that that happens. Diolch.