diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index 0034b86d..291cb02d 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ Section: mail
 Priority: extra
 Maintainer: Carl Worth <cworth@debian.org>
 Uploaders: Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net>, martin f. krafft <madduck@debian.org>
-Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7.0), pkg-config, libxapian-dev, libgmime-2.4-dev, libtalloc-dev, libz-dev, emacs (>= 23~)
+Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7.0.50~), pkg-config, libxapian-dev, libgmime-2.4-dev, libtalloc-dev, libz-dev, emacs (>= 23~)
 Standards-Version: 3.8.3
 Homepage: http://notmuchmail.org/
 Vcs-Git: git://notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch