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Housing and the Credit Crunch

As my hon. Friend will recall, I stressed the importance of increasing the output of social rented housing and other affordable housing. My comments are about the importance of ensuring that we do not lurch back into the pattern of mono-tenure estates. There are some pretty nasty examples of those—I think of the Ferrier estate in my own constituency that is currently being demolished. The last thing we want to do is spend money producing housing that is so unsatisfactory that it has to be pulled down 30 or 40 years after it was built. Instead, we should produce environments where people will be happy to live for centuries, because they are built to a high standard and achieve the level of social integration that I and my hon. Friend feel is essential.