This set of SIs is an answer to a massively important question about how we build more homes that are fit for communities, but the answer is blindingly obviously the wrong one. There is no evidence that planning logjams such as those to which the SIs are meant to be a solution are the problem. Some 40% of homes with planning permission over the past 10 years have not been built.
We need to look instead at some of the other reasons we are not building the houses that we need. It is about, for example, the lack of funding for local authorities—the lack of understanding that we need to directly intervene through council housing and social rented housing to provide the homes that we need. It is also about the fact that the price of land is so utterly prohibitive. It would be much more sensible in this time of rapid and urgent legislation to tackle the Land Compensation Act 1961 and reduce the value of land as a whole so that we get more houses built that are affordable.
The relaxation of permitted development rights has, as we heard from the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), already reduced quality. The Government’s own commission reported that seven out of 10 buildings built under the existing rights lacked adequate light and ventilation, and were, as the hon. Gentleman said, creating the slums of tomorrow.
That was not always the way the Conservative party approached social rented housing, by the way. Harold Macmillan, when housing Minister, did tremendous work. He was the one behind the Parker Morris standard: really good quality council houses, with lots of good space around them. Council houses can be good houses, and that is what they need to be. [Interruption.] If I have got something wrong there, I will give way.