This debate opened with a very constructive speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Peter Walker), in which he put ten points for dealing with the Present Housing Shortage Crisis.

Sadly, the post-war housing policies of big public sector building programmes and controls of private sector rents trundled on unchanged through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, long after the Crisis of Housing Shortage everywhere had given way to a much more varied pattern of local needs that could not be solved by that blanket approach.