It is all right for the hon. Gentleman to shake his head, but it is lazy and it has played into the hands of the Minister and the Conservative shadow Minister. It has taken valuable debating time and taken the Conservatives, in particular, away from discussing the problem and putting suggestions forward, which was what Dr. Cable did. That is outrageous. The title given in the Order Paper for the debate is "The economy, repossessions and the housing market". If the object of the exercise is to deal with the emerging problem of repossession, which hon. Members in their constituencies know to be a real problem as they sniff the wind, speak to people and attend surgeries, the hon. Gentleman and his party—or whoever wrote the motion—are not doing us any service by lumping it in with the economy. The motion allows us all to have a ritual run around the economy. I think that the Minister was right about the motion.

I do not tend to view politics from London or this Chamber. I prefer to consider politics through the constituencies. I do not see how anyone can table a motion that suggests that we are nearing a recession and that we are in all sorts of economic gloom. I used to sit on the Opposition Benches, and Members were accused of talking down the economy. I can see now, from the Government's point of view, where that sort of mood comes from. There is an element of talking ourselves into trouble by talking down the economy.

If the hon. Member for Twickenham wants to suggest that we are near a recession, he should remember that during the recessions that we had before the Labour Government took over, some 3 million people were unemployed. The hon. Gentleman dug around the Red Book and suggested that unemployment would possibly grow by 200,000, which would take the figure to 1 million, but such a figure is far different from 3 million unemployed, which caused such misery in our communities. We are still trying to dig ourselves out of that misery, even after 10 years of this Labour Government.