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Housing

My Lords, does the Minister agree that often it is simply the lack of infrastructure funding, particularly for transport, not the issue of targets, that has held back the delivery? Today we are completing some 40 per cent fewer houses a year than we were in the 1970s. To give an example of why targets are not the problem, in my own local authority area in Kent we have a nine-year land bank available now of housing land allocated in local plans, but it is not being built on simply because of the lack of transport infrastructure. Eighteen months ago, the IPPR report said that transport infrastructure today was less than it was in the early 1990s. Furthermore, does the Minister agree that the much more devolved system enjoyed by European countries in relation to transport infrastructure, economic development and housing powers has been shown to deliver more houses and to keep supply in much better balance with demand?