I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. The experiences she has at her advice surgeries talking to her constituents chime neatly with what I am being told. Yes, we must empower housing associations and others to build homes. The focus especially on building council homes is incredibly important, because that is where we as a nation are failing. There is huge demand for council housing in particular, not just in Walsall but in my constituency, but there is just not the supply to go around. That must urgently be looked at. Those targets are being missed.
I hope that Labour will end the scandalous practice of foreign buyers purchasing swathes of new housing developments off plan before local people can even see them. We will strengthen the rights of tenants with a new private renters charter. Only a generation ago a couple in work could aspire to get on the property ladder, to eventually pay off their mortgage and to give their children a helping hand. Today, that dream is out of reach for millions thanks to the utter failure of this Government. The Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), is the 15th since the Tories came to power and the sixth to hold the post in the past 12 months alone. What hope do ordinary people have with such chaos at the very heart of Government?
Labour will build the homes that people need. We will take steps to meet demand in the decades to come and we must also boost social housing, as I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). That is how a Labour Government will fix Britain’s broken housing market for people in Slough and across our nation.
If the Government cannot, or will not, commit to matching Labour’s focus on this vital issue, if they cannot deliver genuinely affordable homes and if they continue to let this programme fall even further behind, they should just admit that they have given up trying to help the millions struggling with housing across our country.