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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am grateful to the Minister of State both for her generosity and for her concern for my physical health. The draft south-east plan presented to the Government in March 2006 proposed the creation of 28,900 new homes per year. I do not sniff at that—there is a need for new housing—but the plan added the rider that the creation of new homes should be closely related to the availability of infrastructure and associated services. Now that the Government's panel of planning inspectors has said that it does not accept that new home levels should be contingent on infrastructure, I eagerly anticipate discovering on which side of the argument the Minister falls.