Alan Whitehead
Main Page: Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We now have some 700,000 empty homes, of which over 300,000 have been empty for more than six months, and it remains a key priority of this Government to bring them back into use so that some of the 1.7 million families on council house waiting lists and the many more who would like to purchase their homes can do so.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
T3. Will the Secretary of State confirm the really startling figures from the first quarter of the operation of the new homes bonus, which show that new home starts went down by 18% compared with the same period last year, and that residential planning permissions went down by 23% compared with that same period? If he can confirm that those figures are correct, will he tell us what plans he has to revise the mechanisms of the new homes bonus?