The need for affordable housing to help young people and families is becoming acute. This week is Rural Housing Week – an annual opportunity to highlight the homes crisis. There are real problems in my constituency and they are made worse by a boom in demand for holiday homes which can leave some villages resembling “ghost settlements” during the off-season. The demand for holiday, second and retirement homes in recent years has inflated house prices to a point where they were are well beyond the reach of young families on low wages. It is not only the young who suffer. Similar problems are forcing out many older people who have lived in tied accommodation up to the point where they retired, just to find the only properties available for them may be 10 or 20 miles away. Now is the time for all housing providers to start working together to tackle the problem head-on. I have and will continue to argue this in Parliament