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Housing and the Credit Crunch

The extraordinary thing about this debate is that I do not understand how the hon. Gentleman expects anybody to take seriously anything that he says about these numbers or these programmes if he is not prepared to tell us how much his party would allocate for investment in housing, how many homes they would provide and how that programme would be delivered. All this vague stuff that he talks about, such as greater freedoms, getting rid of targets and all the rest of it, does not mean a single thing. It does not mean that a single brick will be laid, a single home will be built or a single family will be rehoused. Until he is prepared to provide that sort of detail, no one is going to take seriously the points that he is making. He is point scoring on these issues. I say to the hon. Gentleman that I think that he and his party are in for a rude awakening when the next election comes. It is interesting that they continually try to present themselves as adopting the approach that our party adopted in the mid-1990s, when we were campaigning for Government after a long period in opposition. They try to suggest that they are adopting similar techniques and campaigning methods, learning from what we did and all of that. However, there is a big lesson that he should learn.