The housebuilding records of the major parties, graphed

2 May 2014

Last night's Question Time featured a debate on the cost of housing and its links to housing supply.

Lib Dem Party President Tim Farron MP pointed to the Labour Party's record on council housing, saying that the last Labour government built fewer council houses than Thatcher's government.

This is correct.

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It's worth noting that this doesn't include all social housing, much of which is built and managed by housing associations. We explored the recent history of social house building in more depth in a factcheck last year.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper MP, on the other hand, brought up the supply of housing as a whole, saying that house building is at its lowest level since the 1920s.

As we found last month, it is at its lowest peacetime level since then; there was a steep drop during the second world war.

Housebuilding since 1920s latest

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