My Lords, I begin by agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the intention of government in providing housing, and about people—not usually the tenants themselves, and subsequently the owners—sometimes trying to profit from housing that is intended for an entirely different purpose. I hope the noble Baroness will recall the undertaking I gave in Committee to get a working group together to look at how such fraud can be
eliminated from the system. I feel very committed to that. I also take on board her point about the detail perhaps not being ready when noble Lords might want it. I hope that noble Lords will at least give me credit for trying to do that when I can, and in as much detail as I can.
I assure noble Lords that the Government already publish a significant amount of statistical data on the composition, tenure and affordability of housing through various mechanisms such as housing surveys and data collection exercises. For example, as part of the English housing survey, we publish an annual report on households. For 2013-14, this included information about tenure in the social rented sector, the private rented sector and owner-occupation. It compared each of these tenures and looked at how the relative size of each has changed. The report also examined measures of the affordability of social rented accommodation and movements into and out of the social rented sector.
Additionally, the Government publish various housing statistics, giving up-to-date data on a range of issues such as affordable housing supply, dwelling stock estimates, net supply of housing, housebuilding and housing market data. That is very useful information which provides a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of changes in housing stock, tenure and affordability.
With that reassurance about the extensive data—