A listening brief: an interview with Rebecca Evans

Ms Evans’ first 10 weeks in the housing brief have been busy ones.

To name just a few highlights, she oversaw the final passing of a bill to abolish the Right to Buy in Wales and has announced major policies on anti-homelessness strategies and home ownership initiatives. Behind-the-scenes discussions are ongoing to shift capacity around different local authorities’ Housing Revenue Accounts.

But it’s no secret that Ms Evans came into post under tragic circumstances. She was shuffled in to replace Carl Sargeant following undisclosed allegations about his personal conduct amid the sexual scandals in Westminster. Four days later, he took his own life.

“It was obviously an incredibly sad time to be coming into the portfolio,” she reflects. “I knew Carl for more than 14 years, so he’s been a good friend to me – or was good friend to me – for many years and obviously we miss him very much here in the Assembly.”

Just a week into her new post, with the news of Mr Sargeant’s death still hanging heavy in the air, she delivered a keynote speech at Community Housing Cymru’s (CHC) annual conference. Afterwards, witnesses noted how nervous she had appeared. But they were also impressed by her sincerity. This comes through clearly as she looks back on that day.

“It was quite daunting to be addressing the sector, partly because of the circumstances in which I was giving that speech,” she admits. “But I was also aware that I was speaking to an audience without actually having had much time to do much listening. And I always prefer to do as much listening as I can to understand the concerns that people have in the sector, to understand their vision, their aspirations, what they think that they can contribute.”

She stresses this last point several times during our conversation. It’s fairly typical of a government minister to express willingness to listen, but it’s also evident in the way Ms Evans carries herself: attentive and free of bombast or bluster. She comes across as measured and thoughtful and appears somewhat reluctant to let the conversation linger too long on herself rather than her government’s policies. In response to a query about her passions away from the Senedd, she pauses, before explaining how she tries to balance her time between her ministerial duties and her constituents.

“I prefer to do as much listening as I can to understand the concerns people have in the sector, to understand their vision, their aspirations.”

Before politics, Ms Evans worked for a disability charity, though she says she was always “fascinated” by politics growing up as she did during the miners’ strikes, which had a profound impact on Welsh society. “You saw the incredible power of politics on people’s day-to-day lives but also the fact that how politics was used and the values behind the decisions that were made could really make a difference,” she recalls. “And so that always said to me that politics is a place where you can make a difference.”

Since entering the Senedd as assembly member for Mid and West Wales in 2011 (she now represents Gower), Ms Evans has held several roles relating to health and social care, including the ministerial brief up until November.

Those experiences colour her approach as housing minister. “I was always really aware of the impact that housing can have on health and on the way that people can access society more widely,” she says, citing this “holistic” understanding of housing as central to her own outlook in the role.

Of course, one crucial responsibility of a government minister is to engage with the industry. That is perhaps especially true in Wales, where the social housing sector enjoys influence with government ministers of a kind which England associations would surely envy.

“I don’t think anyone did more for the housing sector and for housing in Wales than Carl"

Ms Evans appears optimistic about what she’s seen from the sector so far. “I’ve really found the sector to be excited about what more they can deliver,” she says. And she backs CHC’s call for a review of housing policy in Wales, agreeing that it’s “the right thing to do” and that “now is the right time”. This is remarkable, really, when one considers all the housing policies and legislation to have come out of Cardiff Bay in the past few years.

In that sense, the minister appears to share the ambition of a housing association sector which recently committed to doubling its housebuilding output during the next two decades.

“It’s about having that healthy level of challenge, but also a very supportive working relationship because we share a really clear vision for social housing in Wales in terms of wanting to drive up quality, making sure that we have the widest possible range of housing provision to meet the wide range of needs that people have,” she says. But she also wants other players to step up to the housebuilding challenge, especially small and medium-sized builders.

Despite the huge strides made under her late predecessor, there is still plenty more work for Ms Evans to do. She is clear she wants to pick up where Mr Sargeant left off, both as a tribute to his memory and to fulfil her own determination. “I don’t think anyone did more for the housing sector and for housing in Wales than Carl,” she says. “And I think it would be a tribute to his work to recognise what he did by taking forward some of the things that he was particularly passionate about.”