Mr. Kevin James:

On the Deputy's earlier question about social and affordable housing, we have acute shortages in terms of self-delivery. I will cite a recent personal experience of speaking to one of my company's directors. We are building a large social development, an apartment complex. As part of the quantity surveyor's remit and role, the brief came out and the design started to unfold. We had a social and affordable scheme that had the same cladding as originally specified, coming from wherever, whether it was the private or public sector. The role of driving viability is to test where the market sits in terms of what we can afford to build right across the country.

We do not have enough apprentices. We are working really hard on that at the moment. The concern for the construction sector is how to attract apprentices into an industry in the current climate. When we look ahead, what is on the horizon? We are at the tipping point of major schemes beginning to stop as a consequence of being unaffordable. For large apartment complexes, there are pressures from the funders and financial markets to start on-site, and we are working with developers who really want to get a project on site. They rely on our information, budgeting and forecasting to decide whether to go or stay. I am working on large private projects and very large public sector projects and the decision to be made at the moment is whether to hold off or move forward with confidence. Momentum in the industry is really important because the objective is to provide housing, not at any cost but to control the cost and mitigate the risk.