My hon. Friend is right: tough decisions had to be made. All of us in our constituencies have seen the benefits of that decision to invest in the decent homes programme: it has transformed the lives of millions of tenants.
Why have the Government made these mistakes? They started with the catastrophic error of judgment of cutting £4 billion in affordable housing investment in 2010, which led to a 68% collapse in affordable house building. What we have had subsequently are a succession of false dawns: four “get Britain building” launches, 300 separate initiatives and thousands of press statements. I once said of the former Housing Minister that if we had a home for every press statement that he issued we would not have a housing crisis.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun looked at the track record: NewBuy was to produce 100,000 homes, but thus far there have been 2,500. When the Minister comes to respond on NewBuy,
he might care to refer to the recent Help to Buy announcement, when the Prime Minister ruled out, from the Dispatch Box, any question of its being used to buy second homes. I tabled a written question:
“To Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer…with which organisations or companies (a) he and (b) other Ministers in his Department have met to discuss the mechanism that will be put in place to stop people using the Help to Buy Mortgage Guarantee Scheme to purchase a second home.”
In answer, I was told that
“Treasury Ministers have met with a number of companies in the mortgage industry to discuss a wide number of issues, such as the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, including through the Home Finance Forum.”—[Official Report, 1 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 408W.]
Has a mechanism been agreed?