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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I entirely disagree with that. Of course voids are a problem, but the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that one should release more of those properties to the private sector is not the answer at all. The reason that they are voids is that there has been low investment and a low level of repairs. Let us not forget that, under the Conservative Government, repairs and improvements plummeted. The cost of the repairs that had been accumulated by 1997 was estimated in a report of that year to be about £20 billion. That is the fundamental problem and that is what the Government are taking their first steps to try to deal with. More particularly, within the total, the number of additional affordable houses for renting, which is the epicentre of what we have to attend to, needs to be considerably higher. The Government propose an extra 15,000 houses a year, which is very good. It is 50 per cent. above the current output. But is it enough? I think the centre for housing and planning research at Cambridge has done the most recent and thorough work on this matter. It has updated the Barker analysis and has used the latest population forecast. It has estimated that an additional 60,000 social rented homes are needed by 2011—above the planned outputs in the Bill—to meet urgent newly arising need and to do what the Government rightly intend to do: halve the total in temporary accommodation, which is currently about 100,000. What we are seeing is a good first step, but we need to address the issue.