Housing Costs (Reformed Welfare System)

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The scheme for working out how much space people need and paying them for it was introduced in the private sector many years ago. The Opposition will make the valid point that they did not make it retrospective, but the Government then say that if we want to deal with overcrowding and the like, this is one of the difficulties. Speaking personally, I would rather not do any of these things, but we do not have the finances for that. If we had chosen to take the Greek approach and say, “Can’t pay, won’t pay”, and then run out of money, we would not have had to do a lot of these things, but sadly we have to try to bring the books into balance over time.