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Draft Legislative Programme

The first thing the hon. Gentleman should recognise is that the priority after 1997 was to modernise and improve the existing stock. A huge amount of investment, worth billions of pounds, went into improving more than 1 million council housing and social housing tenancies. As a result, many children, pensioners and other people who were living in substandard accommodation are now living in decent accommodation. Therefore, it is wrong of the hon. Gentleman to portray the last 10 years as a period when we failed to renovate stock. [Interruption.] Exactly: we have renovated stock. We now have to build more stock. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is right: he says that we have done well, and I hope that that will be included in Hansard...Having renovated, we now must build. I hope that we can find a means by which social housing partners, housing associations and local authorities can be involved in that.