Firstly, I want to say 'thank you' to Dawn Bowden for giving me a minute of her time. It's strange, really, because David Melding, Dawn and I quite often speak on housing and often our speeches are interchangeable.

After sustenance, housing is the next human need. I want to highlight inadequate housing. The 1950s and 1960s saw large-scale slum clearance and large-scale council house building providing housing for people like my family as we moved from privately rented housing. A large number of houses previously privately rented were bought by individuals to be their home. We have now seen many of these bought, some in very large numbers, by individuals often living many miles away to be rented out. I cannot see any way of dealing with inadequate housing except by large-scale council house building. We should also see an increase in the number owning their homes as currently privately rented properties will return to owner occupation. It is not serendipity that the time of a large increase in council housing coincided with a large increase in owner occupation.