Low-Cost housing
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Ruth Cadbury(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Can I check that the hon. Gentleman is not giving way?
Almshouses
Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Ruth Cadbury(7 years, 6 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Marcus Jones
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster has made several points, and he can feed those into the housing White Paper process.
On the national planning policy framework, which was mentioned, there was a consultation last December on changes to the framework, with a view to increasing the supply of housing. Any changes that will be made in the framework will be undertaken through the White Paper process. Again, I encourage my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members to feed into that. The impact and implementation of section 106 agreements will again be looked at in the forthcoming housing White Paper, and I encourage my right hon. Friend to look into that.
I was a little disappointed by some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth in the wider context of housing, because her party presided over the lowest ever level of house building in 2009. House building has picked up significantly since then. From 1997 to 2010, the stock of affordable homes in this country fell by 420,000. Since 2010, the coalition Government and the current Government have created 293,000 affordable homes. In this Parliament, we are continuing that, with a programme for another 100,000 affordable homes to rent. During the 13 years that they were in power, the Labour Government built fewer council houses than this Government have in the last six and a half years.
Ruth Cadbury
Perhaps the Minister could explain something relating to the net gain or loss of social rented housing since 2010. In my area, the right-to-buy discount is so high that council houses have been sold through right to buy at a faster rate than new social rented housing, both council and housing association, has been built by our local authority. On his comment about the number of council houses built under the last Labour Government, it is true that council house building was low, but housing association new builds were very high. We also delivered the better homes programme, in which a high proportion of council homes were brought up to the decent homes standard—they had been neglected for many years before that.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
Order. I do not want Members to slip into bad habits just because we have a reasonable amount of time.