Can I thank Plaid Cymru for tabling this debate? I'm also pleased that I am no longer a lone voice raising housing concerns—we're talking about it more and more. Can I just say something in response to what Janet Finch-Saunders said? And I'm quite happy to be interrupted if what I say is wrong. I would say, unequivocally, that no-one wants landlords to increase rents. No-one wants that to happen.

The major post-war solution to the housing crisis was to build council houses. It worked. I believe that this is still the best long-term solution. It, however, took 25 years post second world war to reach close to housing equilibrium. So, the mass building of council housing is not a quick fix. It's, however, the only long-term fix that will work, with the housing built being low energy, thus reducing the cost to the people living in those houses of energy costs, and helping to solve the other problem we've got, which is climate change. It's a win-win-win situation. 

I am, however, currently concerned that over 70 per cent of private rented households in Wales relying on universal credit to pay their rent have a shortfall between the amount they receive and the rent they pay. With local housing allowance having been frozen in cash terms since April last year, this proportion with a funding shortfall is set to increase still further, despite private rents in Wales increasing by much less than inflation. Private landlords aren't pushing up the rents, but what is happening is that local housing allowance is getting nowhere near meeting what is needed.

Given the cost-of-living crisis, it's illogical and cruel to have a housing benefits system that fails to reflect the realities of private rents. UK Government needs urgently to unfreeze the local housing allowance and peg it to average rents in any given area. Without this, an increasing number of renters are going to struggle to pay their rent, eat and heat their homes—something is going to give. And if you go and see the queues in foodbanks, you can see one of the things that is giving.

Many people, mainly working families, through no fault of their own, face a serious financial squeeze. There is no justification for continuing to fail to provide housing benefit support that provides the security of knowing that those relying on it can cover their rents. All it is doing is exacerbating the already serious cost-of-living crisis faced by many tenants across the country. Importantly, there is little evidence to suggest that increasing the local housing allowance would artificially inflate rents. As Ruth Ehrlich, policy manager at Shelter noted:

'We have not found any significant relationship between the proportion of people claiming LHA in a given area and rent inflation.'

I call on the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to unfreeze the local housing rate, and I also call on the Welsh Government to make exactly the same demand of the Westminster Government.

In 2021, as a response to the pandemic, the UK Government took the decision after many years to unfreeze the housing cost support element of universal credit, known as local housing allowance. It meant that it would cover the bottom 30 per cent of rental prices in any given area—nowhere near what it should be, but it was moving in the right direction. In his 2020 spending review, however, the Chancellor took the decision to once again freeze the LHA rate in cash terms from 1 April 2021. So, every year that goes on, 2 or 3 per cent more people end up not having enough. As rents increase, the fraction of properties that private renters in receipt of universal credit can afford will steadily decline. The amount of support that renters receive is linked not to current rents, but to those in 2019, which is three years back. It is little wonder that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has described the freeze as 'arbitrary and unfair'. I'd add another two words to it: unkind and unnecessary.

The most recently available data from the Department for Work and Pensions shows that, as of November 2021, across Wales, almost 62,000, which is two thirds of the private rented houses on benefit, had a gap between their local housing allowance award and their monthly rent. How are they going to make that up? It's by turning the heating down, turning the heating off, not buying the tokens to pay for the heating and, more seriously, not getting food. And I've said this before, that people, mainly mothers, will just go hungry, because they haven't got enough food to feed themselves and their children, so their children come first. Is that the sort of society that we want? Is that the sort of society that the Conservatives wish to force on us?

It should be noted that this is all happening—[Interruption.] Yes, certainly.