11. What discussions has the Cabinet Secretary had with the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning about increasing the budget allocations for tackling the housing crisis? OQ61474

I will continue to have discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning as part of our annual budget process, and there is also regular monitoring that goes on with that portfolio. While I recognise the challenges for the sector, public finances continue to be extremely challenging.

Of course, we don’t have a Cabinet Secretary for housing and local government at the moment, do we? According to one estimate, poor housing costs £95 million per annum to the health service here in Wales, and only around 4 per cent of the total Government expenditure is spent on housing. How, then, can you justify this relatively low level of current expenditure, given the financial savings that could emerge from increasing that investment, never mind the benefits for the people of Wales?

Of course, most of the funding that we provide for housing is capital, and in that sense it takes up a much greater share of the capital budget. And in fact, our commitment to social housing is clearly underpinned by our funding of over £1.4 billion in this Senedd term. That is significant funding, especially given the fact that our capital budget in real terms has been declining. Our commitment to social housing is absolutely clear and it will continue. I think that the work that the previous Minister was doing in relation to the transitional accommodation capital programme and Leasing Scheme Wales as well were particularly important, and she did recently open the transitional accommodation capital programme for 2024-25 with an indicative value of £100 million. Again, that’s a really significant investment to try and bring forward that quality longer term accommodation for people who are currently in temporary housing.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary.