May I say how pleased many of us are that we have at least moved to this stage? It means that at least some of the money that goes from selling council houses goes back to building new ones. The trouble is that the Minister is saying, rightly, that this is the first time that this has happened, which is true—but both sides of the House should be pretty ashamed of what has happened before.
The truth is that the sale of council houses, for it to be sensible, should mean that you sell a house to somebody who lives in it and it is therefore not vacant for anyone else to live in, then use the money towards building houses that are not lived in and which new
people can move into. At long last, we are doing this. But let us not kid ourselves—neither the Labour nor the Conservative Party has done this before, and that is what was wrong about the whole system. It was supposed to be circular and, as usual, the Treasury pinched the money, under both Labour and Conservative, because the Treasury never changes. So congratulations—and I hope that the Minister will press for all the money to go to local councils for this purpose.