Diolch yn fawr. Firstly, let me thank Darren Millar for the opportunity to debate such an important subject today. I thought the last debate in the Senedd this afternoon showed the Welsh Conservatives at their best. I'm sorry to say, I thought that Janet Finch-Saunders's opening showed them at their worst: ideological, contradictory and short sighted.

But let's focus this afternoon on what we do agree on. Each of our manifestos last year identified housing as a key priority, and now more than ever we all appreciate what it means to have a safe and secure roof over our heads and somewhere to call a home. Our experiences of the last two years have focused our minds and made us even more keenly aware of the need for everyone to have access to a safe and affordable home, and this is reflected in our programme for government.

It has, of course, highlighted the huge challenges people face when they don't have a home that best suits their needs. We know that the pandemic has impacted the house building industry right across the UK. The National House Building Council reports that new home registrations fell in every part of the UK in 2020—a 28 per cent drop in the south-east of England and Scotland, and a 38 per cent fall in Northern Ireland. The latest Welsh statistics on new house building in Wales, released just before Christmas, show that the number of dwellings completed in the year 2020 to 2021 decreased by 24 per cent to 4,616. And I want to be clear that, whilst this decrease is disappointing, it does reflect an unprecedented period. We do need some 7,400 new homes every year according to our estimates, and 48 per cent of those need to be affordable housing.