Should the government create a national construction materials strategy for new towns?

No prevailed 19 to 14, a 16-point margin that counts as a solid rather than crushing rejection of Katherine Adams's call for Whitehall to map materials for the new towns programme. On a chamber this size that is a real if not overwhelming verdict against adding another national strategy to the pile.

The sharpest fracture was not generational but by gender. Men split down the middle, 10 apiece, suggesting genuine ambivalence about central planning versus letting supply chains respond to demand, as Rebecca Larkin's market-led argument implied. Women, by contrast, backed the idea by only 2 to 7 — roughly one in five — a far more decisive dismissal of state coordination in this instance.

Age told a thinner story: the two largest cohorts, 16-24 and 25-34, both leaned No by similar margins (38% and 41% yes), while the tiny 45-54 and 65+ groups went unanimously Yes, though on counts too small to read as a trend. The overall pattern echoes a familiar strand in housing debate — younger voters, most exposed to the supply crunch, proving no more convinced than their elders that another strategy document is the fix.

If there is a lesson in the numbers, it is that scepticism of a new bureaucratic layer cut across age but not across gender — the platform's women were the real swing bloc against it.