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Social Housing in London

While I accept that the policies are somewhat different, and I suspect that most of my residents in Westminster are rather glad of that, there is a more serious point to be made. The hon. Gentleman rightly refers to stable, mixed communities. Does he not recognise that the London market has become ever more polarised? London is not just a capital city but a global city. That polarisation means that, for want of a better phrase, the squeezed middle is an ever bigger group in London. There are those who simply cannot afford to get on the ladder even if they are earning multiples of the average weekly wage and there are those who are so impoverished that they can qualify for social housing. In my constituency the Peabody Trust is trying to create a mixed community, by ensuring that there are in those communities, for want of a better term, yuppies—relatively well-off people in their 20s—who may only be short-term tenants, for three or five years, until they are in a position to afford their own home.