Second Homes

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:55 pm on 18 November 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:55, 18 November 2020

Thank you, Siân. As you know, it's a really complicated problem that we do have a lot of sympathy with, but there isn't a simple solution. We cannot take primary legislative powers between now and the election because we've simply run out of Senedd time in order to do that. So, that just physically isn't possible to do. We have a number of things that we really wanted to get through in this Senedd term and those have all had to be dropped, and we're all pretty heartbroken about it. So, there's no point in my trying to pretend otherwise. There's no chance of us getting new primary legislation through on this point, or any other point, actually, other than those that have already started their passage through the Senedd.

We have already as you know done a large number of things in Wales, including differential land transaction charges and differential council tax regimes, and so on. You'll know that, in the cross-party group that met with us, we're looking again at the data issues to see if we can isolate particular types of housing that we could take action on. It's actually much more complex than it first appears when you try to isolate which particular set of houses you're actually talking about, as you know. And so, I do look forward to the meeting with the First Minister and the campaign group, but it's much more complex than just changing the planning law, for example. So, there are a number of issues, as we discussed at great length in the group last time, that would need to be taken into account.