Roberta Blackman-Woods
Main Page: Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) opened the debate by referring to five years of failure. By the way, I do not know where he is. He seems to have done a bunk. He spent a little time in the Chamber; he did not turn up to the Committee stage of the Bill at all, which for a shadow housing Minister strikes me as a little odd. What he should have referred to is five years of recovery from the dreadful situation we inherited. I enjoyed his speech.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Unfortunately, my right hon. Friend has had to go and meet the Minister because of the decimation of the steel industry in his constituency.
Mr Bacon
I understand that. It is a very good reason for not being in the Chamber. I enjoyed the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, particularly the reference to the money inherited from Labour. There was no money. I do not think he got the memo written by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) that played a significant part in the general election. The Prime Minister carried it round with him the whole time. The memo said that there was no money.
We have been facing not five, but 50 years of failure from all Governments, who have worked on the flawed assumption that only the Government can solve the problem. For 50 years Government have been part of the problem, getting in the way of the supply of housing being allowed to rise to meet demand. We saw quite a lot of finger-wagging from the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, but we heard nothing in the way of solutions. I listened to Opposition MPs carefully for many weeks in the Housing and Planning Bill Committee and I heard a lot of whingeing, but no real solutions. It is as if they have never asked themselves why the supply does not rise to meet demand. We do not talk about the shoe crisis, the jeans crisis, the DVD crisis or the chair crisis. Everyone in this Chamber is wearing a pair of shoes—including you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and if I may say so, yours are very nice shoes.