A measure of what has happened in investment in public housing is that the number of starts by local authorities in London in 1990 was 2 per cent. of the number in 1978. The lack of investment seems to be recognised by everyone except the Government.

In 1990, the then Conservative chair of the London Boroughs Association said: A substantial increase in the financing of social housing provision and the release of more council house sales proceeds is urgently required in order to prevent a crisis becoming a catastrophe". None of that has been done.

Last year there was a national inquiry into British housing in which the Duke of Edinburgh was involved. On the renewal of housing, it said: So little housing has been demolished that every new home built today in Britain will have to last 2,700 years if present trends of repair and demolition continue."—[Interruption.] That is not my figure; it comes from the national inquiry. The Audit Commission report said that, depending on the range of projections for the increase in the number of households during the next 10 years—that number is increasing—social housing provision, and not council housing, needs to he in the region of 60,000 to 90,000 per year. In 1990 it was 28,000. Under current plans, whatever happens, if the Government meet every target for housing associations, they will not make up that shortfall.

The Audit Commission clearly said that expenditure was required and that even if local authorities did nothing but maintain existing stock and support the private sector, there would be a shortfall of £1 billion in 1993–94, on present plans. The commission also said that, whatever local authorities did about efficiency, there would still be a large gap between supply and need—not supply and demand.

I was first involved with housing in 1974, when I became the chairman of a London borough housing committee, in Waltham Forest. I inherited a mess. There were many empty properties, about 200 to 300 were squatted and there were long waiting lists. Now it seems like the beginning of the homelessness crisis, although it was bad enough then. The next four or five years were the only period that I can recall from my involvement in housing when it felt like real progress was being made. We did not achieve perfection, or cure all the problems, but there was progress, because there was real investment. At the end of four or five years of investment in that authority there was virtually no squatting, empty properties were being used, or given to housing associations, and people were being rehoused from the waiting list.

The reasons for the improvement were that we had done something about efficiency in management. There is no excuse for inefficiency and for properties standing empty when they could be used. We also used housing associations. I believe, as do many of my hon. Friends, that we should use housing associations, and we have no problem with that. However, councils were also building houses and buying properties on the open market and were able to make up some of the gaps in their provision.

The cuts started in 1978, and it is true to say that they began under a Labour Government. The famous speech by Anthony Crosland—when he said that the party was over in local government—signalled the beginning of cuts in investment in housing and it has never recovered. Until we make simple changes in policies and put real money into public and social housing, homelessness will increase.