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Employment, Universities and Skills and Housing

This has certainly been a wide-ranging debate, and hon. Members on both sides have brought to bear a considerable wealth of experience from their constituencies and their backgrounds, which was an advantage. For that reason, and because of the time constraints, I hope that Members will forgive me if I do not go into detail about all of their points. I would like, however, to join hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) on an excellent and well-received maiden speech. It was not that long ago that I, as a by-election entrant to this House, was in the same position. We all wish him well, and hope to hear from him again in the future. It was apparent that a common theme ran through both elements of the debate—a litany of failure on the part of Government policy on skills and housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) dealt with skills at some length in his opening speech, and I will therefore not go into as much detail on that topic as I will on housing. It is important to reinforce, however, that evidence introduced by hon. Members strongly supported my hon. Friend's point. In the skills agenda, we suffer from a huge over-engineering and complexity in the systems for delivering desirable objectives. There are more funding streams and agencies than one would find in the wiring diagram for a modest-sized cruise missile. No wonder it is difficult for those seeking to enter the skills system—never mind businesses—to navigate. Greater simplicity and clarity would be a huge advantage, hence my party's proposals to concentrate heavily on apprenticeships, which have been referred to repeatedly in this debate, and to ensure an emphasis on practical learning, vocational skills and the needs of business, particularly small and medium-sized businesses. I am afraid that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills does not seem to have learned that lesson. On housing, DUIS and the Department for Communities and Local Government at least share one thing in common: they seem almost to be in a competition to see how many initiatives and pledges can be abandoned. It is a bit like a competition between Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor to see who has the most discarded wedding rings on their dressing table. [Interruption.] I know that it was a long time ago for the Under-Secretary, but I am sure that he will have read about it in a history book. If he goes back to Madonna, perhaps he will get the same flavour, but it would be good for him to go back a little further. Let me remind the Minister of some issues closer to home. We have seen the collapse of delivery in the Government's housing policy. The root of all our problems is that not enough homes are being built and it is this Government who are failing to build them. On average, 31,000 fewer homes are being built a year than under the previous Conservative Government. Fewer affordable homes are being built. Not once in all these years have the Government built as many affordable homes, which are at the sharp end of need, as were built in any equivalent year under the Major and Thatcher Governments. That is a lamentable failure of the most vulnerable and the most in need. The private housing sector has also been subject to failure. No wonder there is so much legitimate concern about repossessions, to which hon. Members have referred. Why is that such a difficulty? Not only is there a lack of supply arising from the Government's policies, but the explosion of easy credit exacerbated the problem and pumped up the housing market in an unsustainable fashion. Who is responsible for driving that? [Interruption.] It is no one on the Conservative Benches, as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) well knows, but the Prime Minister, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and now as Head of Government. Who personally removed the Bank of England's power to call time on bank lending and who stoked up an unsustainable housing boom? It was the Prime Minister. Now that the consequences are coming home, it is ordinary hard-working families who are having to bear the brunt. Abandoned ideas litter the Department for Communities and Local Government a bit like the abandoned gun carriages that littered the road from Moscow back to Paris in 1812. There has been a full-scale retreat by the Government on those policy issues.