Yes. Thank you very much, Joyce Watson, for that very timely question. As I know you know, Joyce, empty homes are a complete blight and nuisance on our communities. They attract anti-social behaviour, they impose environmental health problems, they contribute to a general sense of decline in the neighbourhood, and a sense that, perhaps, nobody really cares about this particular street or this particular little neighbourhood. And that's very frustrating indeed when housing is in such short supply as well. It's a real shame and another symptom of our completely dysfunctional housing market that this is allowed to happen. 

So, as I said, we have allocated £50 million over the next two years to bring up to 2,000 long-term empty properties across Wales back into use through our national empty homes grant scheme. And, just to say, although there are varying numbers—around 22,000, for example, of empty homes—it's actually quite difficult to distinguish between those homes that are, for example, being marketed for sale or empty for other reasons, people in long term—. You know, there's a variety of things. So, we've got a very specific grant for homes that are empty and require refurbishment to come back into beneficial use, and that complements our existing scheme, including Leasing Scheme Wales. 

I am absolutely aware of the Bevan report that highlights a growing gap between LHA rates and market rents of private housing in Wales. As you know, the LHA isn't devolved—would that it were. I've repeatedly written to the UK Government calling for urgent and immediate action to address this, and just again saying to colleagues opposite, who I know are not heartless, this is now below—[Interruption.] This is below the poor law. This is below where the poor law was. It's just not acceptable that you cannot find a single property in 16 areas across Wales at local housing allowance rates. This really does need to be addressed. It's a really big problem. It's not a political point; it's a really big problem. And it doesn't make any economic sense. Because of the cost of homelessness to local authorities when people can't stay in the private rented sector because the LHA has been frozen in this unprecedented time of inflation and increasing rents, the amount of money going out of the public purse at local authority level is far more than the amount that would go in at local housing allowance level. So, it's baffling to me why the rate is frozen—it genuinely is baffling to me—and I really, really call on the UK Government to review that situation, because it's heartless and it's causing proper misery. It's also preventing us from helping really good landlords who want to do this scheme with us from coming into the scheme, because now the LHA rates are so low that it's becoming not worth their while to do.

So, just to explain what we do, the local housing allowance rate is what we pay to landlords who come into the scheme. It’s still worth while, and landlords should still look at it, because it guarantees that income every single week, every single month, and you don’t have to put up with voids and turnovers and a percentage going to management properties and so on. So, it’s still very much worth looking at, but the lower the LHA rate goes, the worse it is to try and market it on that point. We have made positive progress. A number of local authorities that have exceeded their initial targets for year 1. It’s positive news that Newport has just expressed an interest as the sixteenth local authority to join the scheme. But an increase in the LHA rate to the proper level would really help.