I acknowledge that the right to buy has been very important for many, many families, particularly those who have a child with a disability and who worry about what’s going to happen to that person when they die. Enabling them to leave them their home does provide some security for that individual who may be vulnerable and unable to earn their own living. So, I’m not ideologically opposed to the right to buy, but I think that the combination of the right to buy and the failure to replace the housing stock has led to a perfect storm. And that is why we need to take this measure.

Because there wouldn’t have been a problem if the receipts from the right to buy had been ploughed back by the Treasury into local authorities to enable them to replace the stock, obviously including the discount, which was pretty substantial at the very beginning, and had it also been accompanied by the building of private houses as well, but the opposite was the case: the private house builders have been sitting on their hands and simply failing to build the quality, affordable new homes that people need. This, in particular, for young people has meant an absolute storm. Because if you don’t have a child you’re not eligible for social housing, they are pushed into the private rented sector and it is so overpriced that they are simply unable to save the money to get a deposit. People put up with this while they don’t have children, particularly students—they put up with terrible housing conditions—because they think, ‘Well, this is temporary and I’ll be moving on next year’, but once you start having children it’s absolutely desperate, because it means that your children can never establish the security of being able to continue to go to the same school. They can be moved on year after year, and they have absolutely no security of tenure.

So, I absolutely agree that we need to build a great deal more homes, but I know that the Cabinet Secretary is having huge difficulty achieving the challenging targets that have already been set. If, David Melding, you had access to the magic money tree that Theresa May has, then maybe we could all be building more homes, and that is what we would like to do—both private and social housing.

I just want to finally say that, if we hadn’t been planning to do this measure we would certainly have needed to do so after the Grenfell fire because I think the Grenfell fire changes everything. I think that the behaviour of many local authorities in London who have been exporting the poor at a rate that is extraordinary, particularly those local authorities who decided to demolish housing estates to make way for new private sector developments, is completely unacceptable and will need to be put a stop to. I confidently predict that all local authorities will have an obligation to plan for and meet the social housing needs of their populations. But, for now, we couldn’t, I don’t think, go on allowing stock to fall outside the social sector at almost the same rate at which we plan to build. Therefore, it was completely correct—