amendment of the law

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point, and if that were a way in which Mrs Pickles and I could obtain a second home in Frinton, it would indeed be a scandal, but that is certainly not the Government’s intention. However, in our endeavours to ensure that I do not end up with a nice little flat in Frinton, we have to be careful not to rule out people whose marriage has just broken down, or situations in which parents are acting as part-guarantors. By September, we will be able to satisfy the hon. Gentleman on this issue.

We know that the demand is there, but it is also clear that for many individuals in very good jobs the housing ladder simply remains out of reach. Under Labour the number of first-time buyers plummeted to a 30-year low. Labour’s 2005 manifesto promised 1 million more home owners, but home ownership fell by a third of a million in the last Parliament. The industry is clear about what lies at the root of the problem. The British Property Federation says:

“Helping people needing a deposit has for some time been cited as the missing piece of a coherent housing policy”.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

What does the Secretary of State think the mortgage guarantee scheme will do to house prices? Is there a danger of increased demand and no increase in supply, and prices going up?

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. However, housing prices are at a more reasonable level now, we will be increasing supply and of course there will be a check on the scheme, through the Bank of England, to see that it is renewed every three years. So the worries that he raises are not correct—

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[Mr Ruffley]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point.

There were no shock-and-awe measures in the Budget, because the Chancellor is probably right to believe that we are not approaching a lost Japanese decade. Nevertheless, I am concerned about the Office for Budget Responsibility growth projections; it forecasts growth of 2.3% in 2015, 2.7% in 2016 and 2.8% in 2017. The forecast turns on one central OBR assumption that might be wrong. The OBR assumes that there is quite a large negative output gap—that, in simple terms, there is a lot of slack in the economy. Forecasting or estimating the output gap is very difficult. If its assumption is wrong, and if the output gap is smaller than it says, a huge amount of the £120 billion a year last year and the coming year is structural rather than cyclical. If that is the case, we will need shock-and-awe measures—deeper cuts than those implied in the spending envelope and, yes, a fiscal stimulus in deeper tax cuts.

[Mr MacNeil]

On the one hand the hon. Gentleman calls for deeper cuts, but on the other hand, he spoke a few moments ago of the importance of consumer spending. In an earlier intervention, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) said that 90% of the money for which those who are being penalised by the bedroom tax are responsible circulates locally. Surely if the Government take money out of the economy, we will see not consumer-led spending, but further contraction in the economy and further gaps.

[Mr Ruffley]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not hear the second part of my statement, when I mentioned deeper cuts in public spending and a fiscal stimulus with deeper tax cuts.

If we do not have the growth we want in the economy in the next 12 or 18 months, I would like capital gains tax holidays of the kind suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), to get investment moneys circulating. I also believe there could be a case for deeper cuts in corporation tax to approximate more closely the Irish model; Ireland has 12.5% corporation tax, which makes it more of a magnet for foreign direct investment.

That said, the Conservative party has indicated that it has the technology should we need to go further and faster in fiscal consolidation. The Conservative economic affairs committee, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, has discussed proposals from colleagues for a suspension of the carbon price. A key cost that is undoubtedly hampering business confidence is that, in 2011, about one fifth of the energy bill paid by small and medium-sized enterprises was attributable to green, renewable policies. Considering whether we want a holiday from that, and certainly not going further than European countries, would seem sensible.

On Budget day, the Chancellor said two important things about monetary policy. First, he explicitly said that the Financial Policy Committee must co-ordinate better in future, under Mark Carney, with the Monetary Policy Committee. At the moment, the regulators are pulling in different directions. The MPC has pumped in £375 billion by printing electronic money in exchange for purchasing gilts from the commercial banks, but that credit is not flowing into the real economy. On the other hand, the Financial Services Authority, and its successor body the FPC, are telling the banks not to lend any of that money and to rebuild their capital position to de-leverage. Those two impulses fight against each other and it is entirely sensible for the Chancellor to say that the FPC and the MPC must co-ordinate better.

Secondly, the Chancellor talked about forward policy guidance via thresholds to commit to looser monetary policy for a set period. That has had a good effect in Canada and the United States, and it will give British business the confidence that interest rates will not be jacked up just as the recovery begins and that economic activity will not be choked off.

I support the Budget with qualifications.

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[Mr Darling]

With due respect to the hon. Gentleman, I anticipated that predictable nonsense. I am grateful to him for intervening, however, not least because he has given me another minute in which to make my case.

As the Office for Budget Responsibility points out, the recession is taking far longer to come out of than any we have seen previously. The principal factor is that in 2007-08 we had a complete collapse of our GDP and that situation has not been recovered in the past five years. Frankly, on the evidence presented by the Chancellor last week, I see little evidence that it is going to happen. As a result, we are borrowing very large sums of money: £120 billion last year, this year and next year.

As I was saying before the hon. Gentleman interrupted, in the Chancellor’s forecasts, yet again in the back three years of the forecast period we see an expectation that growth will go from 2.7% to 2.8% in 2017. That is exactly the same profile that we have seen in each of the Chancellor’s Budgets and autumn statements. The problem is that these sunny uplands are moving to the right each time he stands up. I cannot for the life of me see why anything will be any different in 2017 from the bleak outlook we see today. The problem is that as long as we have low growth we will have high levels of borrowing, and debt is now expected to peak at 85% of our GDP. When we advocate a different approach, the Conservatives and the Liberals say that we are talking about borrowing more, but this Government are borrowing more than they ever imagined they would in 2010, and they are doing so not to invest in things such as infrastructure, but because of the price of their economic failure. That is what many of us have a problem with.

[Mr MacNeil]

Surely by boasting that he would cut harder and deeper than Thatcher, the right hon. Gentleman set the tone for the cult of austerity that we are now living through.

[Mr Darling]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but not in the way he intended, because that is nonsense too. Incidentally, in the leaked document from John Swinney, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, the Scottish Government too faced up to some difficult decisions. The difference is that I and—to give them credit—the coalition Government were open about the difficulties we faced, whereas the Scottish National party wanted to keep them secret from the Scottish people.

It seems that the Chancellor has given up on doing anything. As I said last week, we are in the middle of a lost decade—it happened to Japan and it is happening to us now—and there is no sign that the Government have any idea how to get out of it. The Government’s Budget response on infrastructure is fine, but it does not come along for two or three years. On housing, I agreed with everything that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the shadow Secretary of State, said. The problem is that last week’s announcement is more likely to create yet another housing bubble by driving up asset prices. Indeed, some of it might even sow the seeds that gave rise to the sub-prime mortgage problem we saw in the United States, because we are suffering from an acute lack of housing in just about every town and city in the country.

I was encouraged by what the planning Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), said over the summer. Unless we break through this logjam and get more housing built, prices will go up and up and people will face the same difficulties they did in the past. The irony is that we are not prepared to build houses, but we are prepared, it seems, to finance the inflation of a bubble in housing prices. That is absolutely the wrong thing to do. The bedroom tax illustrates the problem; there simply are not the houses for people whose income is being cut to move to. That illustrates the need to improve our housing infrastructure, although the problem applies to transport and energy as well. I do not object to some measures in the Budget, but nothing in it is likely to get our economy going.

The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds referred to the Bank of England and said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had effectively said, “I can’t do anything further in fiscal terms. It’s all up to the Bank of England now.” Most Members have warmly welcomed the appointment of Mark Carney. I think he will be a very good Governor, but with the best will in the world we cannot expect him to do everything the Government are supposed to be doing. It is useful that we can tell the markets what we think will happen to interest rates. I suspect that most people do not expect them to rise for the next two or three years, although they might rise in the United States, given that the US Government are following a different policy from that being followed here and in Europe.

I do not think, however, that the sort of measures the Chancellor has in mind and which the new Governor might announce in relation to forward guidance will do the trick and get our economy going. I have said before that quantitative easing has played its role and stabilised the banking system—I have supported what has been done so far—but there is little evidence of what additional QE would do for our economy. The risk is that the money simply goes into the bank vaults, not into the wider economy. The Bank will play its part, but monetary policy and fiscal policy have to be complementary, otherwise they simply will not work.

Time does not allow me to mention the eurozone, other than to say that the last week has confirmed my suspicion that the eurozone is almost psychologically incapable of sorting out its problems. Unless it does so, it will hold back growth not only in this country, but elsewhere. At the same time, I am committed to this country remaining part of the European Union—that is very important—although we need to use our influence. Governments can make a difference. In 2008-09, through the G20, Governments from across the world, from communist China to the Republican-led United States, came together and we did what was necessary to support our economies. And guess what? Our economy was growing in 2010. Look at it now.

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[Mr Cunningham]

It was the previous Conservative Government, and that has never been acknowledged, so the hon. Gentleman should not rewrite history.

Another interesting aspect of the present economic situation is that local government has taken the brunt—33.3%—of the cuts. People talk about growth, without realising that it is only through local government that growth will happen. It is worth noting that in the west midlands, for example, unemployment is probably the highest in the country with about 8.5% unemployed, while for young people up and down the country it is as high as 21%. Given those levels of youth unemployment over which this Chancellor is presiding, I think it is offensive when he talks about aspiration and the aspiration nation. The UK has the third worst level of youth unemployment in the developed world; of the OECD countries, only Spain and Greece have higher levels. Since the recession started, the UK has experienced the fastest rise in youth unemployment of the G8 countries.

Speaking about aspiration, the Chancellor is dividing people into “aspirants” who aspire to prosperity and others. It is as though he does not know or does not care that there is a national lack of job opportunities available to young people. It is simply disgraceful for the Chancellor to talk about aspiration when one in five young people leaving school might not find work. The Government need an extensive programme to create jobs for young people and should support them in finding those jobs and training them.

Let me deal with manufacturing. I have often spoken about the west midlands and its success in manufacturing, and I strongly believe that the manufacturing sector can drive local economies and boost growth. I was therefore alarmed at the Budget’s lack of discussion of manufacturing industry. The Chancellor’s only mention of it was his claim that for the first time in 40 years we are manufacturing for export more cars than we import. Well, that started under the Labour Government and certainly not under the present Government. The Government try to take the credit for the success of Jaguar Land Rover, but Labour Members know that the previous Labour Government supported that industry.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to congratulate his old friend on these green Benches—Alex Salmond—on presiding over youth unemployment in Scotland that is at a 20-year low, recently going down from 25% to 17%?

[Mr Cunningham]

Obviously, I—

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[Mr MacNeil]

It is reputed to be the world’s most onerous tax on air travel, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree that it is damaging Scottish airports terribly.

[Mr Donohoe]

I do agree with the hon. Gentleman on this occasion; it is not very often I can say that. The Government are doing absolutely nothing for air passengers, the aviation industry and those who work in it. They continue with this tax, while our competitors throughout the world are laughing at us. The Government are prepared to examine other measures, but not the tax that affects not only my constituency but others throughout the United Kingdom.

The Chancellor says that he wants to boost house building, but how is the bedroom tax going to help to do that? Surely it will add to the confusion about the sort of housing stock we require. I predict that it will be worse than the poll tax for people in my constituency; indeed, I am already seeing signs of that. It will prove to be the Government’s Achilles heel, just as the poll tax was for Margaret Thatcher.

Future growth forecasts have had to be revised, and the Office for Budget Responsibility says that in 2015 most people will be worse off. All in all, the Budget offers the British people nothing other than more of the same failed policies of the last three years. The approach simply is not working, and the Government should own up to that and change tack today, for the sake of the UK economy as a whole.

Reflecting on it, this is the worst Budget I have witnessed since being elected in 1992.

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[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that proposal, which will help not only my local area, but other areas. It also advances the whole aspect of localism, on which this Government are very keen, as I am. As I was saying, companies in my constituency have decided that it is time to start investing, and I hope that many others up and down the country will follow suit.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman says that some companies are starting to invest, but is that not related to what Keynes and, latterly, Paul Krugman have said: in the absence of government doing anything substantial, recessions will sort themselves out in the end, but years of unnecessary pain will have been experienced by many people because of government inaction or wrong policies?

[Alok Sharma]

Thanks to the measures taken by this Government, the deficit is coming down, we have record employment and interest rates are at record lows. I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would welcome all those things, just as businesses in my constituency do.

The Chancellor made the point in his Budget statement that for the first time in more than two decades we are exporting more goods to non-EU countries than to EU ones, and I welcome that. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), for whom I have huge respect, said that there is no growth, but, as he well knows, there is growth; we are expanding our exports to some of the world’s key economies, which is a result of the policies that this Government have put in place and of the good work being done by UK Trade & Investment and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Small and medium-sized businesses still tell us that there is a fear factor when they are looking to enter new markets. UKTI and the FCO have been great at targeting high-growth nations and opening new offices, but we need to turbo-charge that expansion. We need not only to target three, four or five cities in these huge economies such as India and Indonesia, but to go into the 15 or 20 top tier 1 and tier 2 cities. In those economies it is not only the national Governments who make decisions; the state governments make many of the big decisions on investment, which is why we need to turbo-charge our approach and get these offices across these countries quickly. The Government, together with UKTI, should provide practical help by taking on office space in these key cities, basing sector experts from the UK Government and UKTI there, and working with local enterprise partnerships to get out there and allow SMEs low-cost desk and office space for three, six or 12 months. The synergies that will be created as a result of all these companies coming together in one location, with sector focus and where we can also get local advisers involved, will do a huge amount to boost our exports. We want to go from having one in five SMEs exporting to having one in four, which is the European average. That will add billions of GDP to our economy. UKTI is doing a great job with the headstart scheme, but we need to build on such initiatives.

The final point I wish to make is about the local Labour party in Reading—

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[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I am grateful to follow the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson). I think it was the late Harold Macmillan who talked about economists telling people this and that, and about statistics. However, there are some realities in this Budget, which other Members have referred to, and I will also do so in terms of the impact on my constituency.

Let me begin with the general point about the £10,000 income tax threshold for next year. That is reality; that is not statistical. It means that next year, 4,000 individuals in my constituency will not be paying tax. More important for hon. Members to understand is the fact that the average total family income across Lancashire is approximately £26,600, and next year those people will pay no tax on their first £10,000 of income. To me, that is a huge selling point in increasing confidence. People will be able to go out to work and the Government will promise that we will not touch the first £10,000. It seems remarkable that we are in such a state that we can say that that is marvellous, but compared with what has gone on before it is extremely good news for constituents across Lancaster and Fleetwood.

Fuel duty has been frozen. In a huge rural area such as my constituency, where people have no choice, whatever their income, but to be dependent on their car to travel to work and to the shops, the ending of Labour’s plans to increase fuel duty provides massive support for the local economy.

There is the new employment allowance. Most businesses in my area are small, made up of two or three—if not six—people. The national insurance promises in the Budget will be a massive fillip to new employment and to encouraging people to get out there, set up their own business and start moving with the support of this Government.

Hon. Members will bear with me while I discuss a local theme that they would expect me to mention: shale gas. Many hon. Members have looked at shale gas as the great nirvana and something that will fill the energy gap, but that will affect Lancashire. Let me underline yet again that we in Lancashire are still not satisfied that the regulatory regime is right. We welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to an office for unconventional gas and the tightening up of those regulations, but people in Lancashire need to see that the regulations are thorough and tight. Given that farmers still take water directly from the water table through boreholes, Members will be able to imagine the worries in parts of my constituency.

More important than that is the question of who will earn money from shale gas. Lancashire people are quite generous, like me, in their commitment—[Interruption.] Well, we are far more generous than the people from the other side of the Pennines. We are generous in our commitment to the United Kingdom and in our willingness to support it, but as the law stands, the people who own the land, including the farmers on whose land this fracking might—I still say might—take place will earn precious little from it.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman advocating an equivalent to a sovereign wealth fund for Lancashire? That was the source of the reason why all Norwegians feel they own the oil; is there a similar feeling in Lancashire towards this gas?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates me and for once—in fact, not for the first time—we agree. If Lancashire is to be used to fill the energy gap and if Lancashire will see fracking across the county, we need to understand that it is not Texas and landowners in Lancashire do not own the mineral rights. The Chancellor will gain through the tax system, companies will gain through their profits and, presumably, the Duchy of Lancaster or the Crown Estate will gain through the tax on mineral rights, but the local councils will gain precious little. I was pleased that the Chancellor said in his Budget that there would be specific proposals to allow local communities to benefit, but I tell the Ministers on the Front Bench that Lancashire expects more than one or two parish hall roofs to be fixed. We want to see something that will return money to Lancashire when the gas has been fracked, if that fracking is to go ahead. I need to make that clear.

Finally, on infrastructure, hon. Members talked about growth. For me, the key point was the Chancellor’s phrase about “clearing the economic arteries”. In the north-west, that means something substantial and we have had that from this Government. We have had the biggest investment in rail for the last 30, 40 or 50 years. It was all right Opposition Members saying that that would happen in future—it is happening now. I point to my own station in Lancaster, where £8.5 million is already being spent to vary the signalling so that trains can turn around in Lancaster and more platforms can be used. That is the small-scale work. Only last week, the Department for Transport finally agreed the M6 link road, which will be a bypass for Lancaster to the port of Heysham. It will bring thousands of jobs through a scheme for which the first plans were produced in 1948—that is perhaps a lesson to us all. It has taken this coalition Government to agree the money to get things moving and get the growth.

As the Secretary of State mentioned, there is still a great deal more for local councils to do. I am pleased that the Conservative councils in my area, Wyre borough council and Lancashire county council, have kept the council tax frozen. Not only that, but Lancashire has cut it by 2%—

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[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Budget the Chancellor delivered was not the Budget that my constituents or the city of Glasgow needed. The Budget Glasgow needs is one that gets the economy moving, helps people back into work and looks after the most vulnerable in our society. Instead, the Government are willing to give millionaires a £40,000 tax cut at the same time as 17,000 Glaswegians will have to cope with the impact of the bedroom tax. Thousands more will have to mitigate the damage to their family budget of the cuts to child tax credits, cuts to working tax credits and drastic cuts to the local services that many people rely upon. Wages are falling, jobs are being lost, household budgets are being squeezed and there is still no sign of a rethink. Just when will the Chancellor wake up and smell the Starbucks coffee?

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Anas Sarwar]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. He has made many interventions, so let us hope that this one is sensible.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman not disappointed, and should he not be ashamed, that he supports a Westminster Government over independence, so we have the bedroom tax imposed on Scotland? If he supported independence, we would not have the bedroom tax in Scotland at the moment.

[Anas Sarwar]

That shows us the myth of the Scottish National party. The hon. Gentleman says that the only way to stop the bedroom tax is independence; the bedroom tax will be introduced on 1 April 2013, but according to the SNP timetable, independence day will be 31 March 2016. Members can work it out for themselves.

Plan A clearly is not working. For some time, the Opposition have been calling for additional infrastructure investment to boost the construction sector and we have been urging the Government to act. The Chancellor could have used the funds from the 4G auction to build 100,000 affordable homes, stimulate the economy and help tackle the housing crisis, but instead he decided that public services and public sector workers should bear the burden. Not content with imposing a 1% pay freeze until 2015, he has extended it to 2016. Given the rate of inflation, that is an effective pay cut for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

With 80,000 construction workers out of work, construction output has fallen by 8.2%. The Government announced an extra £225 million for affordable housing, but only £125 million of that will be spent before 2015 according to the OBR, and it is dwarfed by the £4 billion cut in funding for affordable housing that the Chancellor made in his first Budget. Even after that investment the coalition Government’s record will still be a cut of around £10 billion in infrastructure projects.

It says everything about the Government’s attitude that they cut real-terms pay for millions of public sector workers, while giving the green light to slash corporation tax for big business. Research by the House of Commons Library, published today, confirms that the reductions in corporation tax will cost £29 billion in total, £10 billion over the life of the current Parliament alone. That policy enjoys the full support of the Scottish nationalists, who want to see a future independent Scotland at the front of a race to the bottom, a low tax country with an economy like Iceland—or perhaps like Ireland. I have not seen the latest Scottish Government press release, so I do not know which country they are modelling their assessment on this week.

[Anas Sarwar]

No, I am suggesting that while people across the country—especially the most vulnerable—see their household income slashed and the poorest people are having to live in more difficult circumstances, the Government see their priority as giving millionaires a tax cut and cutting taxes for the biggest businesses in the country. I know whose side I am on. I am sad to say that I know whose side the hon. Gentleman is on, and I am sure people will punish him appropriately come the next general election.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Anas Sarwar]

I have given way twice already, but if I have any spare time at the end of my speech I might let the hon. Gentleman entertain the House.

The Chancellor claimed the Budget showed he was on the side of people who want to get on; instead it has shown just how out of touch this Government really are. The low-paid workers the Government say will pay less income tax will still be worse off at the end of the month, when that saving is clawed back many times over—clawed back through VAT, clawed back through cuts to tax credits and clawed back from thousands of my constituents through the scandalous bedroom tax.

Yes, the Liberal Democrats can celebrate lifting the threshold to £10,000, but household income for many families in that bracket will fall as a result of the Government’s measures. At the same time, the value of an average worker’s pay has fallen by more than £1,000 and persistently high inflation continues.

In these difficult economic times, the Chancellor should certainly accept our proposals for the funding for lending scheme to be enhanced to target small and medium-sized enterprises better by rewarding banks that expand SME lending regardless of their mortgage book. Now is the time when our banks should be supporting SMEs, not hitting them harder. Throughout my constituency, whether I am speaking to small or large businesses, they all make the same complaint: the banking sector is holding back investment in this country, not promoting it. If we can get our banks lending again and get people investing, we will get more people back to work and see growth and regeneration in some of the hardest-hit communities.

The Chancellor should seriously explore our proposals for new regional banks that are committed to their regions and in touch with local business, making it easier for firms to secure the capital investment they require to create the growth and jobs Britain needs. Sadly, my constituents continue to suffer, trapped between this coalition Government, who continue to look out for the wrong people, and a Holyrood Government, who are distracted by their referendum obsession and happy to double Tory cuts and pass them on to local government, washing their hands of all responsibility and removing £250 million from Glasgow’s economy. We heard earlier from one of the SNP Members that we should recognise that the fall in unemployment was thanks to action taken by the Scottish Government. It is amazing that when unemployment goes up, it is all Westminster’s fault but when it goes down it is all thanks to the Scottish Government. It cannot be both.

The reason why I and countless others in the House went into politics was to help build stronger communities, not to use the poorest and most vulnerable people as electoral or political dividing lines, writing off millions of people as a drain on the economy for electoral advantage. We want to help to create a sustainable economy to fund world-class public services, ensure that society’s resources are distributed equitably and protect the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Last Wednesday I sat and listened to the Chancellor lay out his vision for the coming years. It is a vision that I and, I am confident, the majority of people in Britain reject.

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[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman said that we cannot have new homes unless there is a market for them, but the problem is not the market but price and affordability; it is the supply of homes.

[Richard Graham]

That is precisely why the help to buy scheme, which guarantees 20% of deposits on new homes, will make a significant difference.

There is one aspect on which I agree with the right hon. Member for Leeds Central and on which I hope the Government will be able to move faster: the need to restructure some of the arm’s length management organisations that provide social housing and enable them to use their balance sheets to build and regenerate, rather than just adding to the public sector borrowing requirement. My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury knows well that I hope that that will move forward fast, and that discussions between the Homes and Communities Agency, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Treasury, which have been ongoing on for almost 18 months, will move forward swiftly so that we can deliver new housing in the social sector to my constituents as soon as possible.

New housing worked in the 1930s and 1950s and it can work today, so let us get on with it and build those new homes as soon as possible so that the economic growth that the Centre for Cities research anticipates can happen as soon as possible. I will be supporting the Budget to achieve that.