Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:40 pm on 10 March 2021.
Thank you, Delyth. Again, I reiterate what I said to Laura and to Mark. It's been good to work with you. We've found a lot of things in common as well as things where we can disagree, and where we've disagreed we've been able to discuss that disagreement in a civilised way and with the evidence on both sides. So, I'm very grateful to you. It's been a real pleasure to work alongside you as well throughout this Assembly, and, now, Senedd term, which appears to me to have gone extremely quickly in the last few months as well. I can hardly believe we're here at the end of it.
In terms of evictions, yes, absolutely, I agree entirely that we cannot have people being evicted, especially into homelessness, potentially, in the middle of a pandemic. You'll be aware that we've already housed over 6,000 people in the course of the pandemic, which shows you the real extent of the difficulty. The pandemic is making the system creak at its edges, and we certainly don't want to add an enormous number of people from the private rented sector to that in circumstances where they would be unlikely to find anywhere to go, and especially, actually, where they're in a circumstance where they could not go to stay with a friend at the moment inside the COVID rules and so on—not that that's ideal by way of housing people.
Of course, we keep the evictions ban under review in every three-week cycle as always. I'm not in a position yet to say what the First Minister will be announcing on Friday, but, of course, it's one of the things that we consider at each three-week cycle. We continue to do that. We are very aware that the current end is at the end of March, and that is under review. I have constant meetings with my officials about what we can do to make sure that tenants are protected and kept safe during the pandemic, and, also, frankly, what plans we have in place for when the ban is eventually lifted, and what we do with the potential numbers of people who might be presenting as unable to carry on in their present accommodation at that time. So, I can assure you that we are taking it very seriously indeed. I absolutely understand the imperative to do it and it's very much part of the review process.