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Housing Waiting Lists

That intervention gets to the heart of the difference between the parties on housing. I will come to that later. I know that the Minister has only recently taken on her portfolio, but she would do well to consider these figures. In the last recession, 60,000 affordable homes were built by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) when he was the Housing Minister. This year we will be lucky if 10,000 affordable houses are built. It is a question not so much of what proportion of the total are affordable as of how many homes are built in total. That is the main point that we have to understand. Eleven per cent. of a big figure means more than a larger percentage of a smaller figure.