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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am not entirely certain what the hon. Gentleman is getting at. What is very clear, as I said in my opening remarks, is that economic circumstances throughout the world have changed in the six months since we last looked at this legislation, but that the fundamentals of the housing market in this country have remained the same. There has been a huge imbalance between demand for and supply of housing for something like a generation. One of the things discussed in Committee was the ability of the agency, using skills and expertise at the disposal of local authorities, to allow councils to step up to the plate to provide skills and capacity to ensure that the strategic housing market assessment that local authorities undertake allows them to build the houses that their area requires.