I need to declare my interest as chair of Housing & Care 21. We built 1,000 homes last year. We have built far fewer this year but are very engaged in this intricate industry.
All the points have been made but I just wanted to say that this industry is very cyclical. The other feature of it is that it is dependent on a mass of subcontracts, so it is very complex. If we are going to do a review, now is a good time. We are at the beginning of the cyclical upturn and there is a concern to get work done. The whole capacity of the industry needs looking at because a lot of it was wiped out in the recession. Anything we can do to improve the capacity of the industry and make it more resilient is good. As sure as fate, whatever happens, there will be another recession and some of these problems will re-emerge. My whole experience of the industry is that it just goes suddenly dead. It is the most scary industry because people stop
buying homes and it goes right through the chain, and then of course it is the small guy who loses out because he has no capacity to get his money back—he is down and dusted—and a huge part of the capacity of the industry goes with it every time. These measures are needed to build confidence in the industry, to build capacity and to allow it at the end of the day to produce more homes at less risk.