Sir Keith Joseph arrived in Blackpool for the 1963 Conservative Party conference knowing that he was unlikely to repeat his triumph of the previous year. But at least he had won another Cabinet skirmish over his housing plans, and could give his audience something to cheer. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Boyd-Carpenter, had doubted the wisdom of raising the annual target for housing completions once more. Joseph now wanted a figure of 400,000 per year for 1965–70 – despite the fact that in his White Paper of June he had deliberately omitted a definite deadline even for the 350,000 target – and Boyd-Carpenter had objected that this would overstretch capacity in the building industry. Persuading Macmillan of the need for higher housing targets was never very difficult, and Joseph overcame any reluctance the Prime Minister might have felt this time by predicting that an early announcement would steal the thunder of Labour, who seemed likely to unveil a similar figure as their goal if they won the next election. Besides, bad weather at the start of 1963 meant that this was going to be a poor year for completions, so there was even more ground to make up.

The debate went well for Joseph, whose ambitions appeared more moderate and attainable once the Crosby MP Graham Page had repeated his attempt to raise the bidding to half a million houses per year. Joseph also predicted that his Housing Bill would be “very unpopular with bad landlords who exploit the housing shortage”.