Worcester Sauce

Paying tribute to Peter Walker in answer to a question from Robin Walker, David Cameron enthused about the sale of council housing.

That policy compelled the State to make gifts of significant capital assets to people who were thus enabled to enter the property market ahead of private tenants who had saved for their deposits. And, as part of Thatcher's invention of mass benefit dependency, it created the Housing Benefit racket, which is vastly more expensive than the maintenance of a stock of council housing.

No wonder that, far from being either "wet" or "independent-minded" as you please, Peter Walker was a Cabinet Minister continuously from 1979 to 1990. He ranks alongside Kenneth Clarke, who was repeatedly promoted by Thatcher, and Michael Heseltine, who privatised more of the British economy than any other Minister in history.