Covid-19: Housing

Lord Bishop of Portsmouth Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

The noble Lord is right that we must ensure that we have housing of all types and tenures, including affordable housing for key workers, as he outlined. I note that the affordable homes programme for the next five years is £12.5 billion—that is greater than the amount for the previous programme of £9 billion. We should ensure that building of more affordable housing can begin and that such housing is not for people who have not made their contribution to this country. There are ways of ensuring that we do that. I thank the noble Lord for his question.

[The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth]

My Lords, the Statement speaks of homes for all people as the Government’s vision, so I congratulate them on the funding they have made available which has allowed a huge amount to be done to support homeless people in a very short space of time. Does the Minister accept that withdrawing dedicated funding risks undermining all that has been achieved in providing housing as a first step towards the homeless having homes?