Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Alison Seabeck and Lord Stunell(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Andrew Stunell
I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is a scandal that we have in this country 300,000 homes that have been empty for longer than six months. In Blackpool and Wyre, the number of empty homes actually fell last year, and I want to give credit to the work of Blackpool council’s working group, which is working with other agencies to reduce that number. However, the investment that we will announce later this month will make a big difference to the figures nationally, and, I hope, in his area.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my previous declarations of an indirect interest, which are a matter of record.
Although I welcome all attempts to bring empty homes back into use—I saw some excellent examples during the recess of self-help schemes that do just that, including in Leeds and Hull—homelessness and rent have increased, as the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), admitted over the weekend. It was therefore surprising that his colleague, the Housing and Local Government Minister, wrote to me during the recess to seek my guidance and ideas from Labour’s policy thinking. That was from a man who pointed out that the shadow Minister was going to—
Alison Seabeck
I just thought that that would be an interesting point, Mr Speaker.
Even with the net addition of empty homes being brought back into use, can the Minister tell us when he expects house building under his Government to exceed the 207,000 net additions achieved under Labour in the year before the recession hit?
Andrew Stunell
What I will say is that our investment in social housing, which we announced in the comprehensive spending review with the aim of delivering 150,000 homes, will in fact deliver 170,000 homes. That is a massive success which will increase the stock of social housing above and beyond Labour’s targets.
Housing Market Renewal
Debate between Alison Seabeck and Lord StunellWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Andrew Stunell
The hon. Lady’s point is thoroughly understood. I do not think that she will be disappointed, but she is tempting me on to territory on which it really is not right for me to advance.
Alison Seabeck
Just for absolute clarity, I would appreciate it if the Minister would clarify something that he said. He stated that authorities would not be disadvantaged in the first year. Given that many of these housing and regeneration projects are much longer programmes, I think that we would all have serious worries if, after the first year, those authorities were disadvantaged as a result of the changes.
Andrew Stunell
I was responding to the suggestion that Stoke-on-Trent might lose £26 million. Stoke-on-Trent will not lose £26 million. I think that I have already made our intentions clear. There have been some other statements, but the detail of the scheme will be well debated when it is published, so I think it is best if I go on to respond to several of the other points that were made in the debate, if I may.
It is way over the top for the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) to say that the Government’s decisions have set areas back by decades. That is absolutely not the case. Investments have been made and, even in this debate, reports have been given of their success. It might be said that there is a greater belief in the successes among Opposition Members than Government Members. It is absolutely not the case that such work will be set back as a result of the decisions that have been made.
I want to link that to what the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) brought to the debate. I leave aside his dismissal of deficit reduction, because that sensible Government aim underpins our whole financial strategy. The hon. Member for Hartlepool must be well aware of the deficit problems found by the incoming Government. However, the hon. Member for Hyndburn cannot have his argument both ways: it seemed to be that the fundamental difficulty in east Lancashire was too many homes and not enough people, in which case it can hardly be wrong if the new homes bonus generates more houses in places with more people than it does in places with an excess of houses. I want to tell—
Localism Bill
Debate between Alison Seabeck and Lord Stunell
Andrew Stunell
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The housing measures in the Bill will provide greater discretion for social housing landlords and their professional staff. They will relax the rigid rules set by central Government in the past, and together they will allow landlords to exercise greater discretion, adapt the services they offer to local needs, and manage a valuable public resource more effectively in the best interests of local people.
I recognise that flexible tenure and the proposals to deal with homelessness have caused the most concern to date. Let me repeat what I said in Committee. In the vast majority of cases in which a social landlord offers a flexible tenancy, we will expect that tenancy to be for at least five years. It will often be appropriate to provide longer—in some instances, lifetime—tenancies. If an elderly lady is offered sheltered accommodation or a bungalow, any sensible landlord will doubtless provide a lifetime tenancy. However, if that family in my constituency with three teenagers in a two-bedroom house are finally allocated a three-bedroom house, it surely makes sense to give them a 10-year tenancy, subject to renewal. After 10 years, when the children are in their twenties and have probably left home and the family’s circumstances have changed, they will have had time enough to decide whether that is the accommodation they want.
Alison Seabeck
Does the Minister not accept that the situation he describes will end up involving an amazingly complex series of different tenures and rents, which will be a nightmare for housing providers to manage, and that it will clearly lead to the system stagnating at times and being hugely unfair?
Andrew Stunell
Of course I do not accept that. A housing provider who decides that this is too complex can choose not to take it up. As has been said, we are offering social landlords an additional way to let tenancies, and they can choose whether or not to take it up. They can base that decision on any sensible factor, including their administrative convenience. We propose that five years should be the minimum term in normal circumstances. We would expect it to be appropriate to offer less than five years only in very exceptional cases, and we have stated in the Bill a two-year lower limit.
Andrew Stunell
Yes. It is important that we review the guidance—I just said that we should do so—and it would be an unusual local authority that disregarded it. I undertake to reflect further on the best way forward, and I hope that my hon. Friends and the hon. Gentleman feel that that is a step forward which allows them not to press their amendments today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) has tabled new clause 26, which relates to a specific situation for fully mutual housing co-operatives. By a quirk of the legislation, they are caught by the houses in multiple occupation requirement for licensing and, sometimes, planning permission. The Department has been lobbied by the Friendly Housing Action campaign group to secure an exemption for fully mutual housing co-operatives, and I am very sympathetic to the campaign, as such organisations were never intended to be caught by the licensing provisions.
We have to be careful to ensure that in granting an exemption we do not inadvertently allow other categories to slip through the loophole, so I am asking for further advice on how we might achieve that. I hope to return to the issue at a later stage, so I hope that my hon. Friends will not feel the need to press new clause 26 to a Division.
I thank the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) for new clauses 25 and 24, which she and her hon. Friends have tabled. They both relate to cases in which courts made decisions that the common-sense man would not have expected. New clause 25 refers to a situation in which the housing allocation scheme was perverted—I think that is the right word—by an officer, and consequently the courts decided that, because of the nature of the current legislation, it was not possible to recover the properties that had been misallocated. I am certainly minded to take some steps in the right direction. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government recently launched a 10-point plan for tackling council fraud, and that included vetting staff. I hope that that means that it is very unlikely that the situation will recur, but we are going to look at how we might move forward. On a rather significant technical point, the place where Opposition Members have chosen to insert the words means that the provision would apply only to Wales; I suspect that that is not what they really meant to do.
New clause 24 deals with a situation where a death was concealed at the transfer of a tenancy and therefore a vital time line was missed and it then proved impossible to correct that. The new clause changes the time limit restrictions so that when a local authority seeks to repossess a property, the date at which it became aware of the change in circumstances, rather than the actual date of the circumstances, will be relevant. I fully accept the point drawn to our attention. We will explore the issue in more detail and talk to various local authorities and representative bodies with a view to tabling a Government amendment in the other place. I hope that the hon. Lady feels that that is a helpful way for us to proceed.
I cannot be so consensual on other amendments tabled by the Opposition. I do not want to detain the House unduly, but I must say that we have a considerable mixture of amendments of one type or another, to which I will perhaps respond in my final 16 seconds, if that is how it turns out. Some of them are direct negatives of our proposals in the Bill, some are wrecking amendments to one degree or another, and some are quite seductive in their tone, if not their impact. Several of them duplicate safeguards that are already in the Bill or even in legislation as it has stood for some time.
Some of the amendments seem to be based on an Opposition view that social landlords are even worse than they think private landlords are, with their principal business being to get people out of their homes as quickly as possible. Of course, that is not the primary purpose or intention of social landlords, which is to provide suitable accommodation for those who need it, as will continue to be the situation in future. Other amendments seem to be more about whipping up misunderstanding among vulnerable families than about making a contribution towards solving the heartrending problems of homelessness.
I urge hon. Friends and other Members to support the Government’s sensible and thoughtful proposals and to reject the many temptations offered by the Opposition.
Alison Seabeck
I repeat the declaration I made at the start of the Public Bill Committee, which is on the record.
I thank all those involved in Committee proceedings on this large and extensive Bill, including the two very patient Chairs, my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) and the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess). Although we had well-informed discussions in Committee—Members on both sides of the House are to be commended—I am left with the feeling that we could have done with significantly more time to debate the issues.
Yesterday, the Minister started by saying that the Committee was consensual—not so on the housing proposals, I am afraid. We debated more than 40 amendments and new clauses on this part of the Bill, and not one was accepted by Government Front Benchers. Although I welcome the moves that the Minister has made today on a couple of our proposals, I do not get a sense that he is giving any ground. Indeed, having listened to his speech and responses, I think he is rather digging in; of course, that is his prerogative.
The Opposition cannot let these proposals go unchallenged. I will therefore speak to amendments 269, 270, 273 to 276 and 360, new clauses 24 and 25, and amendments 13, 14, 271, 272, 277 and 278, which stand in my name and those of my hon. Friends. I flag it up at this stage, given that the Minister has not astounded us with a number of U-turns, that we will press for votes on amendment 13 on flexible tenancies and on amendment 271 on security of tenure.
Alison Seabeck
Perhaps, but the point is that there is clearly an appetite among Conservative councils for making use of this provision, offering the minimum they need to and removing security of tenure from people who choose to move.
It is not a choice I would wish on any family, and it will create disincentives to move within the sector by throwing sand in the wheels. We need to make it easier for people to move within the sector, yet the Government’s proposals will make it harder. If the Government press ahead and create this dog’s breakfast of a flexible tenancy, we want them to stick to their promise not to break secure tenancy rights of existing tenants, even if they choose to move. I and my right hon. and hon. Friends raised this issue with the Minister in Committee during the stand part debate on clause 132. He revealed that the previous guarantees given by his ministerial colleagues were worthless, when he said that the decision on whether tenants would keep their security of tenure would rest with the discretion of the landlord, but that
“if a tenant chooses to move to an affordable rent property, it is reasonable that discretion should be available to the landlord as to whether that remains in place”.––[Official Report, Localism Public Bill Committee, 8 March 2011; c. 856.]
For us, that is simply not good enough. It does not retain security of tenure, and gives landlords a degree of flexibility that we think is negative for tenants. That is why we oppose it. I am disappointed that amid the 234 Government amendments and new clauses there is no amendment to match their rhetoric. That is why we tabled amendment 271. The Government might not be willing or able to stand up for the rights of existing tenants, but the Labour party certainly is.
Amendment 277 is similar to an amendment debated briefly in Committee at the end of a morning sitting. At the time, the Minister said that clause 134 was part of a cleaning-up exercise, to which I said we would leave things there and consider whether we needed to come back to the issue on Report. As the House of Commons Library rightly points out, the clause removes the statutory right of those other than spouses and partners to succeed to a secure tenancy. Currently, in the absence of a spouse or partner, the close relatives of a secure tenant who have resided in a dwelling as their only or principal home for 12 months prior to the tenant’s death also have a right to succeed to the tenancy.
Our amendment would extend statutory succession rights beyond spouses and civil partners, to those who have acted as live-in carers for at least one year and siblings who have co-habited for at least one year. Carers contribute an enormous amount to society and to those—almost always close family members—for whom they care. We will all know of cases in our constituencies in which family members have moved into their parents’ or other relatives’ homes to act as carers. It is an act of love that can place tremendous strain on the carers, and the commitment it requires should not be underestimated. Nor, on a more transactional level, should the amount of money they save the Treasury be underestimated. Age UK, in its submission to the Bill Committee, wrote:
“Given the contribution of carers, they deserve to succeed to a tenancy or have an offer of alternative social housing with a lifetime tenancy.”
Andrew Stunell
Does the hon. Lady accept that the Bill will give registered landlords the opportunity to have tenancy agreements that allow carers to succeed to a tenancy even if they are not related to the person holding the original tenancy? The Bill will give landlords that flexibility for the first time, not take anything away.
Alison Seabeck
Yet again, this is all about discretion and saying, “Trust us.” I am afraid that we would like to see something clearer in the Bill.
Live-in siblings are another group for whom there should be statutory succession. Once again, we can all look at our constituency experience. During the passage of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman said:
“It is profoundly unfair that carers and siblings who cohabit are disadvantaged on the death of one or other of them by being forced out of their home by their tenancy terms”.—[Official Report, 12 October 2004; Vol. 425, c. 188.]
That legislation was the wrong place for that debate. This Bill is the right place, and our amendments would address the issue. Something else that ought to be addressed, and which we sought to address in Committee, is the right of unmarried couples. I am pleased that the Government seem to have shelved the idea of giving £2 a week—or whatever it was—to get married. However, the Bill gives newlyweds more succession rights to a tenancy than a cohabiting unmarried couple who have shared a home for decades, even when those newlyweds have cohabited for only a matter of days. That is not fair or appropriate. If passed unamended, clause 134 would not reflect modern family life for many families in Britain.
The Minister said in Committee that there was some tidying up to be done. I acknowledge that Government amendments 194 to 201 try to improve the provisions and address the succession issues. In so far as they represent a degree of Government movement since Committee, I welcome those amendments. I also welcome the Minister’s acknowledgment at the time that the Bill was far from perfect. A host of Government amendments have been tabled—more than the norm on Report—which largely reflects the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny that the Bill received and the rushed consultations.
I shall try to get through our remaining amendments as quickly as possible. On the right of tenants to complain directly to the housing ombudsman, we oppose clause 153 and seek to remove it with amendment 278. Clause 153 would require tenants to seek permission and approval from their elected representatives to complain about their social landlord to the housing ombudsman. We support the National Housing Federation position on this issue. Amendment 278 would allow tenants the right to complain directly, as they can now. The National Housing Federation represents landlords, who possibly have the most to lose from the change, yet they are very relaxed about allowing tenants that direct link.
New clauses 24 and 25 seek to clamp down on loopholes in housing law that can be exploited by fraudsters and to deal with the issue of fairness—on which the Minister, he say yes! I am grateful to him for acknowledging that we brought to his attention something on which he thinks he can build. I look forward to seeing further amendments in the other place. When it comes to fairness in the allocation of homes and the transparency of the process, we felt that the local authorities in the cases that we highlighted needed a right of redress. Neither case is sub judice. They were highlighted for us by Arden Chambers, and they are Birmingham v. Qasim and Newport v. Charles. We would be grateful if both cases could be looked at in detail and amendments brought forward.
There are a host of issues concerning homelessness that, given enough time, deserve to be debated properly on the Floor of the House. However, given the constraints on Report, it is neither appropriate nor possible to give them another airing or vote on them all, as we did in Committee. I am sure that a number of those issues will be raised again in another place, given the depth of expertise there. In Committee, we sought a requirement for better standards in the private rented sector—a point touched on by the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert)—through proposals for an accreditation scheme. I would support any move in the other place to resurrect that and look at it in more detail.
Anti-Semitism
Debate between Alison Seabeck and Lord Stunell(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Stunell
My right hon. Friend asks me to draw a fine line between having unpopular opinions and committing violent, unpopular and illegal acts. I do not want to get drawn too far into that debate, but the Government and the DCLG are developing their thinking on how to promote integration in our society and tackle the alienation of all groups, even those not necessarily connected to a religion or ethnic background. Unfortunately, there are plenty of alienated young people who do not fit either of those two stereotypical models. Ensuring that we promote the integration of all into society is an important Government objective.
Reference has been made to the cross-Government working group that was set up to tackle anti-Semitism, and I will report briefly on what the group has been doing and what it proposes to do. The group meets quarterly to monitor further progress on the commitments made by Departments to tackle anti-Semitism. That work can be seen in the Government’s response document from last November, and the group ensures that those commitments are followed through. In the first instance, the working group focuses specifically on issues that are still cause for common concern. Anti-Semitism on the internet is top of that list, and we have undertaken to give regular progress reports to Parliament on that subject.
I had a meeting yesterday with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is the Minister with responsibility for crime prevention. We looked at how to ensure that issues of concern to the DCLG and the Home Office can be jointly taken forward, and we will do what we believe to be necessary in order to stimulate action.
Later this year there will be a second ministerial seminar to find ways of improving action and impact. It will involve colleagues from a number of Departments including the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service. There will be representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers and the DCLG, as well as MPs, lawyers and departmental officials. The seminar will be led by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who is the Minister with responsibility for communications. We are pushing forward on this. We are clear that we must find ways of tackling at both national and international level anti-Semitism on the internet.
I want to pick up the point about anti-Semitism on university campuses. First, although I am sure that it was implied in many of the remarks that were made, no one actually mentioned further education, and further education colleges and campuses—
Andrew Stunell
I apologise if I overlooked that reference. The point that the hon. Lady and I—I am sure—agree on is that, of course, what has been said about university campuses is important, but so too is what may be going on in other educational establishments.
The problem was first highlighted by the all-party group’s inquiry in 2005, but progress has been harder to make on it than on some of the other issues that were raised. There are some examples of good practice, including the Manchester university code, but it is clear that that is not enough. There is a strong feeling that many individual universities and student unions have not taken these issues as seriously as they should have done; or perhaps it is not so much that they have failed to take them seriously, but that the high passions that are aroused, often by international events, have been allowed to spill over into completely unacceptable behaviour, which has not been challenged robustly and effectively. We believe that that must change.
Houses in Multiple Occupation
Debate between Alison Seabeck and Lord StunellWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Andrew Stunell
I can, and I shall debate it with the hon. Gentleman later over a cup of coffee. I point out that that is not at the heart of the Government’s case. Our case is quite clear: effective legislation should be in place where there is a genuine problem. We are saying that that will be determined by local planning authorities, not by national legislation.
I understand that the hon. Gentleman has a letter from Southampton city council. I know that Southampton and Portsmouth do not get on well, but Portsmouth has already started the process of imposing an article 4 direction on the whole city. It takes 28 days to do it, and then its 12-month period will run. Perhaps Southampton should learn from Portsmouth. It is dangerous for me to say so, but I will say it.
I commend the Minister for Housing and Local Government on pointing out in the debate on Tuesday that in his constituency of Welwyn Hatfield, Welwyn was fine while Hatfield had a problem due to the university of Hertfordshire students and their HMOs. He supposed, and I understand that he told the Committee, that Welwyn Hatfield council would take action on article 4 in relation to part of its area. Several Members who have spoken in this debate mentioned specific areas in their constituencies that were a problem. The hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) mentioned Branksome East and Winton in particular, and the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) discussed three wards in her constituency.
That is exactly the Government’s point: the problems are comparatively localised, although serious where they arise. We believe that there is a better way to address them. We believe that the article 4 system will deliver. There is already evidence from Manchester, Portsmouth and Exeter that local authorities are responding and are not finding it unduly burdensome to go down that route. The guidance issued by the Minister for Housing and Local Government on 4 November will, I hope, give them some additional reassurance on that point.
I welcomed and enjoyed the contribution made by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). Yes, we will be undertaking a review, as she requested. Yes, monitoring will take place. I am absolutely sure, given all the eyes turned on us, that if we did not, the House would be quick to remind us of it.
Alison Seabeck
Will the Minister confirm exactly how the monitoring will be done and who will do it?
Andrew Stunell
I will have to write to the hon. Lady on that point, but I am very willing to do so. There are a number of questions to which I might not have the opportunity to respond fully and properly, and I will attempt to catch up with them by correspondence.
I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) that we absolutely should not trivialise the issue of safety in HMOs. As a type of housing, they have a poor reputation for safety and fire. That is why a licensing system exists and fire brigades pay special attention to them. However, that is not controlled by the planning system. The planning system responds only to applications, or possibly to reports from neighbours that an application should be made. It does not prevent a rogue landlord from turning his house into something else, which might lead to horrific incidents like the one that my hon. Friend reported. The issue is not part of the planning application process, nor is it specifically relevant to the legislation that we are discussing, but fire protection matters are a responsibility of my Department, and I will take his concerns back to the relevant Minister, so that he is fully aware of the situation.
Another point made was that a local planning authority may be too big a body to take a sensitive and informed decision about where an article 4 order is needed. The example given was Cornwall. If Cornwall is too big an area to take a sensitive and informed decision about where HMOs need to be controlled, how much more true is it that central Government is not in the right place or on the right scale to decide? The driver for the change is giving that responsibility back to the locally elected democratic level in this country, which has been disempowered over the years by successive Governments. We are turning that process around, which means that we are strongly committed to helping councils and local planning authorities take such decisions and respond to pressure from the ballot boxes in their areas rather than to the dictates of Whitehall. That is what localism—turning the whole top-down control system into a bottom-up one—is all about. I do not apologise for what the Minister for Housing and Local Government has said. It is right that the House recognises the importance of localism in this context.
Housing (CSR)
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Andrew Stunell
I welcome that, and I am happy to report that we are continuing the investment in the decent homes programme.
Let me get to the right hon. Gentleman’s central proposition, which is that there was somehow no evidence of a need to change housing policies. The previous Government’s housing policy depended on continuing with the claim that they had dealt with boom and bust. As it turned out, they had dealt only with the boom. There is no public money available—those were the words of the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne). Indeed, during this debate, the Government will have borrowed another £24 million to fund the services that we deliver, but for which we have no income. An extra £400 million will be borrowed today, and another £400 million extra will be borrowed tomorrow and every day this year. This year, £150 billion will be borrowed. The money is not there.
What about targets? We have heard some nonsense from the Labour Front Bencher about thousands of homes having been cancelled. What she actually means is that many of the homes in the Labour targets have not been built. Last year, when Labour was in power, 78,000 fewer homes were built than were in the Government’s target. Only 57% of the target was met. We know, therefore, that the Opposition’s figures depend on an economy that Labour bust, on public money that we do not have, and on public targets that did not work.
Andrew Stunell
I am happy to give way to the hon. Lady and I am listening out for her apology.
Alison Seabeck
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that 70 local authorities have withdrawn planning applications on the basis of a letter sent to them by the Secretary of State?
Andrew Stunell
That, of course, is what was wrong with the targets: they built up resistance in local communities—although not in all of them, of course; colleagues in Yeovil and Chesterfield could not build the houses that they wanted because of the absurd national targets.
The hon. Lady quoted early-day motion 355. Outside Westminster tube station, the National Housing Federation has posted a plea to us all for more affordable and social homes. I want to say very clearly—I shall be saying this on many other occasions—that when it comes to producing more affordable and social homes, a party that finished up with 45,000 fewer such homes than it started out with 13 years before is not in a good position to criticise the coalition Government. When we go in five years’ time, we will leave more homes in the social sector than we started with.
The National Housing Federation briefing, which hon. Members have perhaps drawn on, says:
“Our modelling suggests that the Government’s claim that up to 150,000 homes will be delivered over the four year period is achievable”,
and it adds:
“If one in four new lettings across the sector…are made at 80% of market rent”.
The reference to “one in four” is interesting. Opposition Members imagine that the Government will impose a new model compulsorily on every housing authority. That is absolutely not the case. If the National Housing Federation, which is, let us face it, not a particularly good friend of the Government at the moment, says that we can get our 150,000 homes with a quarter of rents at an affordable level, it ill behoves Opposition Members to spread lies and deceit about the issue.