I am sorry. Much as I should like to, I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman because I am on limited time and I wish to allow my colleagues who have been sitting here throughout the debate an opportunity to speak.

As well as outlining the change of approach, the strategy statements outline the increase in the target to 500 sales per year and the general intention to sell 1,800 properties per year. They also outline the cash incentive scheme as well as the designated sales scheme. That information was all passed on to the Government. They were consulted about it. They were asked for at least tacit approval, in the sense that they made their HIP allocations on the basis of those strategy statements. Indeed, the Government gave extra allocations to Westminster and sought to justify them by pointing to Westminster's appropriate and successful policies. That is how the Government were involved throughout the process.

However, despite the sales policy, homelessness in Westminster was acute. The strategy documents reveal that more than £7 million per year was being spent on housing homeless families in temporary accommodation. Even in 1989, there were more than 700 families in temporary accommodation. That more than doubled in a five-year period once the homes-for-votes programme got under way.

There was a recognition that there was a problem of homelessness and that people had to be exported to other boroughs. Letters were written to the Secretary of State advising that Westminster could not cope under the homeless persons legislation and asking the Government to change it. Requests were made for special capital allocations to provide hostels outside the borough. The most famous such allocation was the Government's attempt to give, outside their own guidelines, more than £1 million to provide a hostel in Croydon for Westminster's homeless families. It never got off the ground because there was a political row with the then leader of Croydon council about putting the hostel in his ward.

A letter from Westminster to the Department of the Environment said:

To embark on such a large scale property designation we will reduce the number of properties available to meet the demand for social housing … If the designation policy is to be pursued alternative solutions to the homelessness crisis in Westminster will have to be found. So all the information that the Government received showed that the sales policy that Westminster was pursuing was causing it a real problem in coping with its homelessness and that it would require action from the Government to solve that difficulty.

Despite all that information, under section 32 of the Local Government Act 1985 the Government approved the designated sales policy. They argued about the sell-on values of properties, but they gave approval. They specifically approved allowing the right-to-buy discounts that would be available to a family if they bought the house that they lived in to be passed on if the family bought one of the properties in the designated blocks. They approved that change to the normal approach.

The Government had issued guidance to the effect that where grants were given to families to buy a vacant property under any sales policy, the properties vacated by families who came from other council properties should be given to homeless families. That guidance was also broken by the Department of the Environment. It never bothered under its monitoring procedures to pull Westminster up and say that the net result of its policy was to deny homeless families homes instead of releasing vacant properties to house them.

Westminster began to operate the cash incentives policy under section 137 powers. It was advised by its own lawyers that the policy was illegal. It continued the policy under section 129 of the Housing Act 1988. Implementation of the policy required specific consent from the Government. The district auditor's report is full of a series of correspondence between Westminster and the Government between 17 July 1987, when Westminster first asked for approval, and August 1988, when it was given approval. The reason for that correspondence, and why initially the Government refused to give approval but eventually did, was that Westminster had to get round the words in the legislation.

Under the cash incentives scheme, where people were given a cash grant to move to another property, the property which they left had to be let to a homeless family. The Government colluded in getting round the words. They produced a review in 1990–91 of what happened to the cash incentives scheme. It showed that fewer than 40 per cent. of the properties vacated under the scheme went to homeless families. More than a third went neither to a homeless family nor to a council tenant in Westminster who moved over, as the Government's policy should have required.

Despite that review, the Government gave Westminster council £4.5 million of extra capital allocations in the early 1990s to follow that policy through. The policy was operated contrary to their own guidance, but the Government gave consent to Westminster to do so under powers in section 129 of the Housing Act 1988. Nothing was done, despite the fact that the Government were providing housing subsidy to implement the policy.

So the Government knew what was happening through information that they received under the housing investment programme. They gave extra capital allocations. They gave consent to the cash incentive grants. They gave consent to the grants to purchase vacant properties. They gave consent to a £1.3 million allocation for a hostel to house homeless families in another borough because Westminster complained that it would not have anywhere to put homeless families because it was selling the flats in which such families should have been housed.

At the same time, the Government, tolerant of that waste of money and the fact that homeless families were being ignored, entered into discussions to set up a Westminster housing trust, even though officers advised councillors that it was illegal. The purpose was to subsidise private landlords to gentrify blocks of flats and let them on to residents of Westminster or others, according to a process which would be controlled by the local Conservative party through the trust. That, too, was discussed actively with Ministers.

While all that was happening, the head of the policy unit in Westminster was a Mr. Phillips, who was on secondment from the Department of the Environment. No one could believe that he was not reporting back to his masters in the Department of the Environment about the policies that he was pursuing. Mr. Phillips eventually became the managing director and was replaced by Mr. Reiter, another appointment from the Department of the Environment, in furthering those policies.

There is no doubt that throughout all this business, the Government knew what was happening. They had the information. They were lobbied; they gave approval; they monitored what was happening by reports such as that to which I referred and they did nothing about it. No doubt they will eventually claim that they did not know everything that was being done. Despite having the evidence, they never put any concern on the record or took any action to stop the abuses that were so apparent to everyone when they were happening in Westminster.

The Secretary of State told us that it is not the right time to condemn Westminster. He will wait for the rest of the legal process to be worked through. While he is waiting, perhaps he could consider carefully the role of his Department and the Government. When it is time for the Government to apologise for what Westminster council has done, perhaps we can have an apology for their actions in this sorry and sordid mess.