Can I thank Plaid Cymru for bringing forward today's really important debate on the private rented sector? I was really pleased that, on these benches, we were able to support the vast majority of the proposals that you've put forward today. But, of course, we aren't able to support point 6. In our proposal, we propose to delete that, which is obviously in relation to the freeze on rents in the private sector. But, I am really pleased that we also have been able to provide some alternative solutions to some of the challenges that are out there at the moment, and I will be exploring those a little bit further in my contribution today.

First of all, I would just like to come onto the point that Mabon ap Gwynfor mentioned in his opening, which is about some of the unintended consequences around a rent freeze. As we've seen in Scotland, where those rent freezes have already been introduced, this has already provided some unintended and negative consequences for tenants and for those seeking to rent property, because the supply of rental housing is reducing whilst demand is growing. Indeed, Scotland's largest house builder has now announced that they are going to halt investment in the private rental sector, partly because of these measures. Also on unintended consequences, in Ireland, where, as mentioned, there are already forms of rent control in place, we've seen recently chaotic photographs on social media of hundreds of people queuing up to try to get hold of rental properties in places like Dublin at the moment. So, clearly, it's not the panacea to solve everything, certainly, at the moment.

The other point that Mabon ap Gwynfor highlighted in opening, which others have mentioned as we've gone through this evening, is the mismatch between supply and demand on privately rented houses. It's quite clear that a rent freeze would do nothing at all to address supply and demand challenges. So, it's really important and, whilst it might be easier to try to dismiss some of the unintended consequences, they are very real if a rent freeze is something that Government wanted to support and progress with. 

As is outlined in amendment 2 today of our proposals, local authorities are being faced with some spiralling costs of temporary accommodation, and there are some significant challenges there that need to be addressed. It struck me that the Welsh Government actually provided local authorities with around £10 million of the COVID tenancy hardship grant scheme, but only 2.3 per cent of that money was actually ever used. So, I wonder, as a quick fix to help in the immediate term, if the Welsh Government could consider using the significant underspend on supporting those who are struggling fairly immediately. There is a key role that our councils can play in helping to tackle some of these challenges. We know that empty homes in Wales are a significant issue; we know that there are more empty homes than there are second homes in Wales. So, we propose that there should be more work done to promote the empty home loan scheme, to make sure more empty homes are being returned into occupied homes. There's a real opportunity there to make a quick difference.

The other issue I'd like to touch on today has already been mentioned, actually; it comes back to this supply and demand issue around seeing more houses being built. It's already been mentioned that there needs to be around 12,000 homes built in Wales every single year, and those numbers are never even getting close in Wales at the moment. That is across all of Wales. It's a fairly simple equation in some ways: more homes enable fewer people to be homeless; it's not rocket science. We have to look at what is causing not enough homes to be built in Wales to meet demand. Because we know—