ALAN WALTER

That this House regrets the sudden death of Alan Walter, a tireless campaigner for council housing and council tenants who brought tenants, trades unions, and councillors together to fight and defeat the pernicious system by which poor council tenants were forced to pay the housing benefit of the poorest tenants, known as Daylight Robbery; recognises that he also established the organisation Defend Council Housing in order to oppose privatisation and to stop the Government taking billions of pounds from the housing revenue accounts and to urge on it a big building programme of a new generation of secure, modern and accountable council housing; and believes that although Alan has not lived to see it, the Government should now embark on and finance the big building programme that the nation needs and to which Alan dedicated his life.