The elephant in the room with this Bill is the ODPM’s house building programme. Hundreds of thousands of new houses will be built in this country by 2031, and my constituency is right in the middle of one of the growth areas. There are 36,000 dwellings in Kettering borough; there will be an additional 13,100 by 2021, and between 5,000 and 10,000 will be built between 2021 and 2031. The Bill gives constituencies such as Kettering a huge opportunity to ensure that those new houses conform as much as we would like to energy efficiency and anti-climate change measures.

The new clause on which we divided was essentially about planning regulations, and I am sorry that that vote was lost. The new clause before us is about building regulations. Although we may not be sending a clear signal on planning law, we can send a clear signal on building regulations that will catch in time the new build that will take place in my constituency. I humbly submit that, in constituencies such as Kettering where housing stock will increase by a third in the next 15 years, getting regulations right in the context of the Bill is crucial.