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Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 13 December 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:37, 13 December 2022

Llywydd, I thank Ken Skates for that question. I remember very vividly a visit that he and I made to the headquarters of the Development Bank of Wales in Wrexham, and it has been one of the outstanding success stories of the last decade. The half-year results, as Ken Skates says, were published in the last week or so. They show a continuing strong trend in direct investment that the bank is able to make, but also the way in which the bank is able to mobilise alongside it other investments from private sources. One of the areas in which the bank has been able to use financial transaction capital, for example, has, as Ken Skates said, been in the leasing scheme. Now, the leasing scheme is a very important part of increasing that supply of housing for rent that other colleagues here have mentioned this afternoon. It allows local authorities to take on properties that are otherwise in the private rented sector, and to invest in the conditions of those homes so that they can be let not just for the short run, but to the medium and long-term run, adding to the supply of affordable social rented homes in those areas. And the role that the Development Bank of Wales has played in allowing that to happen has been an additional string to the bow that it exercises in any case through Help to Buy and other parts of the housing landscape, where the bank's actions have been very important in sustaining that sector during challenging times.