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Affordable Housing

The problem in Shropshire that my hon. Friend has mentioned is mirrored in south Devon, where the Liberal-run council in Torbay has been insisting on 40 to 50 per cent. affordable homes in each development. As a result, perfectly good sites are not being developed, because the private developers are saying that they cannot possibly manage to subsidise so many homes—subsidy is what affordable housing is all about, after all—out of the profits of the private houses that they are building. The consequence is that the private housing prices go up, and the subsidised houses never get built, because the developers do not want to build them. So we are on a hiding to nothing. The whole concept of affordable homes—subsidised homes—is a total myth.