Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:06 pm on 2 March 2021.
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.