My hon. Friend touches on a very important point. The public sector land programme is designed to do just that. In the past seven years, it has released record amounts of land for hundreds of thousands of new homes. There is always more to do. That is why we set out plans in the housing White Paper to achieve even more from that programme.
I can tell Labour Members one more thing that has happened since 2010: more council housing has been built in the past seven years than was built in the previous 13 years. Going back to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), enough public sector land has been released to deliver at least 130,000 new homes, which is equivalent to a city the size of Nottingham.
More than 300,000 new homes were granted planning permission in the year up to March, which was up 15% on the previous 12 months. New build dwelling starts rose by 15% compared with the previous period. Once people are in their homes, they are staying in them because mortgage repossessions are at their lowest level for 35 years. This Government can offer an ambitious, far-reaching plans for the future of house building, built on solid foundations of real success.
I want to contrast that with what is on offer from the Labour party. Let us look at what happened last time Labour was in charge of housing. When Labour came to power in 1997, the average house cost 3.5 times the average salary. When it left office 13 years later, the average house cost seven times the average salary—a massive collapse in affordability and the biggest the country has ever seen. That hit ordinary working people the hardest.