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Housing and Regeneration Bill

Indeed. As the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire—a Labour Member—points out, on the basis of the real figures, I was being 10 times too generous. I was blaming the Minister for only a tenth of the problem for which he is partly responsible, albeit not personally. Despite my concerns about Government policy, when the hon. Member for Great Grimsby suggested that the Minister was in some ways a role model for Robert Mugabe, I thought that that was pushing it a little bit too far. I cannot say, however, that I have detailed knowledge of the current council house building programme in Zimbabwe. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire is completely right: the true rate of house building in the past 10 years stands at 0.1 per cent. of the level achieved during a sustained period after the war. There is a partial explanation for the difference. The Government and the people of Britain made a great sacrifice in order to improve the housing stock; I shall not go into the full historical details, but it is worth noting the interesting set of priorities that were determined after the war. Some mitigating circumstances have been evident in the past 11 years, but given that the Government promised a colossal house building programme, they need to explain how they intend to achieve that when they are putting together economic strategies that will militate against that outcome.