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Housing Waiting Lists

The hon. Gentleman picks up on an important point. One of the extraordinary things about the Government's programme—I am sure they will talk about this in the debate—is that they allotted £8.4 billion for affordable housing in the comprehensive spending review from April 2008 to 2011. If we ask how much of that has been spent, we discover that it is very little, because the issue is driven by market housing, and the market housing is not happening for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman just outlined—mothballing. Aligned with that issue is the number of empty homes—those that have been built but not sold and those that have been previously sold but are now empty. We hear today from the Empty Homes Agency that that number has hit what is probably an all-time record, with 1 million homes left empty. That is a scandal, too, and the Government could do far more to address it.