5. How is the Welsh Government progressing with meeting its affordable homes target? OQ56346

Llywydd, I'm very pleased to confirm that we will exceed the 20,000 affordable homes target for this Government term. The latest provisional release shows just under 3,000 new affordable homes were built in 2019-20, the highest annual total since records began in 2008.

First Minister, following the last election in 2016, you met with my dad—you as finance Minister and him as housing Minister—to work out how you would meet the ambitious Welsh Labour target of 20,000 affordable homes. Now, together, you put in place a delivery mechanism and the finances to ensure this happened. Your leadership and dad's leadership delivered this programme; he dug the foundations and you laid the tiles to the roofs. We should all be very proud of this achievement.

Across Wales, affordable houses have been built, and residents have been given access to much-needed homes. I was contacted by one of these residents who said that, through my work and my support, she was able to access one of your and dad's affordable homes at a real time of difficulty in her life. First Minister, do you agree with me that this is Welsh Labour delivering for our communities and being there for our residents when they need us most?

Well, Llywydd, can I thank Jack Sargeant for that question? I vividly remember the meeting that he refers to. Early in this Senedd term, Carl Sargeant's office and my office were next door to one another. I had newly been appointed as the finance Minister, he was charged with implementing Labour's manifesto pledge to create 20,000 new affordable homes in a five-year period—the largest number in the whole of devolution. I very vividly remember Carl coming into my office and saying to me, 'I need a very big sum of money, and I need it very quickly.' The argument he was putting to me was that, in order to get to 20,000 affordable homes, he needed the bulk of the investment in the first two years of the Senedd term to get the programme under way, to get the houses being built, and that way we would get to the ambitious target.

It is a tribute. It is a tribute to him, particularly, that I'm able to say today that that target has been met, because if it wasn't for the arguments that he mobilised and the force of the argument that led to the mobilisation of that funding, then that ambitious target would not have been met. That is the hallmark of the Labour Party. We will go into the next election with a series of ambitious programmes here for Wales. But, Llywydd, they will not just be ambitious, they will be credible as well. If we say we will do something, then we will deliver it. We said we would provide 20,000 affordable homes. We will have done that and more. And the sort of person who came to talk to Jack about the house that they now have to live in, there will be people like that in every single constituency here in Wales.

Can I ask you, First Minister, about the work that's been undertaken by the Welsh Government to ensure that our veteran community in Wales have adequate access to housing? I know that you, like me, will recall that this week, of course, marks a special anniversary for those veterans who were involved in the Gulf war, and I know that many veterans who've suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder in particular have really struggled sometimes to adjust to returning to civilian life, and unfortunately some of them do end up on our streets. What specific action is the Welsh Government taking to ensure that homelessness amongst our veteran community is eradicated, please?

Thank you to Darren Millar for that important question. I'm very pleased to be able to report that, as part of the enormous effort that has been made by our local authority colleagues, by housing associations and others in the voluntary sector, as he will know, hundreds and hundreds of people who otherwise would have been street homeless in Wales have been offered accommodation in this extraordinary year, and that has certainly included people who have left the armed forces and for whom life can be a struggle in making an adjustment to a different way of living their lives.

Now, here in Wales, I think we've got a proud record of what we have been able to achieve together, and I completely acknowledge that this is an entirely cross-party agenda that we've pursued here in Wales, whether that is in mental health, whether that is in employment opportunities. And I was very glad to be able to confirm to the Member recently that an idea that he first put to me about guaranteeing interviews for people who'd left the armed forces for jobs in the Welsh Government, that we've been able to take that forward, and in housing as well. The Minister with particular responsibility for veterans' affairs, Hannah Blythyn, of course, is a Deputy Minister in the department that has direct responsibility for housing. And making sure that people who have left the armed forces don't find themselves falling into homelessness, but have other and far better housing opportunities for them, that is certainly part of the agenda, the broader veterans agenda, that we have in Wales.

First Minister, it's good that your Government is surpassing its own target of 20,000 affordable homes during this Senedd term, though recent headlines suggest that private developers see Wales as not being a particularly attractive prospect and cite many reasons, including the planning system and Welsh regulations being the most onerous in the UK. We know that the 20,000 target goes nowhere near meeting the actual demand, so what is your plan to encourage a range of providers to build here in Wales? Thank you.

Well, Llywydd, I am proud of the standards that we have here in Wales. It is absolutely essential that when new houses are built, they are houses that are fit for the future, that they are houses that will make their contribution to the net-zero carbon targets that we have agreed for 2050. And I know that there are some house builders who find it challenging to meet the standards that are required, but they are absolutely necessary. The fact that 8,000 of our 20,000 affordable homes were reached through the Help to Buy scheme demonstrates to me that there are house builders in Wales who are capable of delivering quality housing within the standards that we require here. We will go on having standards for house building in Wales that do not leave us with a huge legacy of retrofitting those houses to make them fit for the sort of carbon-neutral future that we need to have. I'm very pleased that we have standards that will stand up to examination by future generations, as our Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 requires of us.