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Rented Housing

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to move away from the main narrative of my speech. All I would say is that I was a councillor in the London borough of Haringey during the 1970s and early 1980s, and I was proud when we managed to complete 1,000 new dwellings in one year. We were taking people off the waiting lists and re-housing them. Then Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister; house building stopped, right to buy came in, and bed-and-breakfast and hostel accommodation returned. Let us not talk of the golden days of the Thatcher Government, because they were not golden for people in housing need. They may have been golden for those who wanted to make a fast buck at the expense of the public sector. That is all that I have to say, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is entirely satisfied by my response.