In 1999, when Labour first came to power, there was no housing supply crisis in Wales, but they slashed the housing budgets and in their first three terms cut the supply of new affordable housing by 71 per cent. That is why we have a housing supply crisis. As David Melding said, for a generation successive Welsh Governments have failed to tackle the housing crisis in Wales, pursuing mirages rather than addressing housing need. It was the second Assembly when the housing sector came together to start warning the Welsh Government there would be a housing crisis if they didn’t listen. What the Welsh Government did when I brought forward motions supporting the sector’s voice on that was put down amendments to remove the words ‘housing crisis’ rather than to address the warnings from the sector.
As David said, by 2031, unless the Welsh Government change tack, there will be a 66,000 shortage of homes in Wales. As he said, we need ambition because housing is a basic need—we need homes for all. He referred to land, and, as Community Housing Cymru have said, ‘What action is the Welsh Government taking to increase the supply of public land for housing at a price that reflects the social value that they will offer the people of Wales?’ I received that this morning. That’s not history: that’s current.
Dai Lloyd emphasised the need to focus on housing standards and making housing more affordable. Hefin David: the need to invest in weak housing areas and link this to employment opportunities; Suzy Davies: the local development plan process had not been the answer and we need to use housing to stimulate sustainable community regeneration. Dawn Bowden talked about England focusing on less affordable housing, that the Tories in England are focusing on less affordable housing. Well, what England’s doing is focusing primarily on intermediate rent, which is also included within the Welsh Government’s 20,000 target. So, if one’s wrong, both are wrong. That seems a little bit odd. She referred to—again contrasting with England—. Since 2010, more than twice as many council homes have been built in England than in all the 13 years combined with the previous Labour Government, when English waiting lists nearly doubled as the number of social homes for rent in England were cut by 421,000. That’s the reality. Andrew R.T. Davies said we’d not got enough homes, full stop. We need to face the challenge also driving the wider training and economic agenda. Gareth Bennett: house prices outstripping wages. Of course, they are; that’s a symptom of the housing supply crisis.
The Cabinet Secretary showed that he was living in his own housing bubble. Of course, he has form. He’s been the housing Minister before and he, therefore, shares culpability for the crisis the people of Wales are facing in this area. He said house building in England had fallen under the Tories to the lowest level since the 1990s. Well, in reality the 2012 UK housing review said it was the Welsh Government itself that gave housing lower priority in its overall budgets. In 2013, Wales was the only part of the UK to see a fall in new home registrations. In 2015, Wales was the only nation in the UK to decrease new home registrations. Even last year, Wales was the only UK nation to see new home completions go backwards. That’s the reality.
In addition to the Holman report that David Melding referred to, we had two reports in 2015 from the house building industry. We had the 2015 report from the Chartered Institute of Housing, we’ve had the 2015 report from the Bevan Foundation, a report from the Federation of Master Builders, all saying that we needed somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 houses a year, including 5,000 social homes, which this supposedly caring, supposedly socially just Welsh Government ignored. Instead, we’ve got their cynical 20,000 target amounting to just 4,000 affordable homes during the whole Assembly term and that’s inflated by adding intermediate rent and low-cost home ownership to their targets. Housing developers have also repeatedly warned for years and years that the cumulative cost of Labour’s anti-housing legislation and regulations will reduce housing investment in Wales. Well, the figures speak for themselves in that respect.
So, I’ll conclude by simply saying, as the evidence shows, that behind the rhetoric, Labour’s betrayal over housing in Wales for the last 17, 18 years has been perhaps the greatest social injustice inflicted on the people of Wales since they took control in 1999. It’s about time they stopped shaking their heads, they stopped denying the truth, they stopped passing the buck—which they were doing long before the credit crunch, long before the 2010 change of Government—and they started admitting they got it wrong and perhaps, belatedly, trying to do something about it.