Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will publish a new housing bill in the next Parliamentary session to address the (a) availability and (b) cost of housing for both renters and buyers.

As the Levelling Up White Paper set out, we have committed to creating a fair and just housing system that works for everyone. We have committed to deliver 1 million new homes by the end of this Parliament and continue working towards its ambition of delivering 300,000 new homes per year to create a more sustainable and affordable housing market.

We have announced £10 billion investment in housing supply since the start of this Parliament, with our housing supply interventions due to ultimately unlock over 1 million new homes. This includes an additional £1.8 billion investment announced at Spending Review 2021, consisting of £300 million locally led grant funding that will be distributed to Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) and local authorities to help deliver their housing priorities and £1.5 billion to regenerate underused land and deliver transport links and community facilities.  We have also launched the £1.5 billion Levelling Up Home Building Fund, which will provide loans to small and medium sized builders and developers to deliver 42,000 homes.

We are also investing £11.5 billion in the 2021-26 Affordable Homes Programme which will build up to 180,000 affordable homes, should economic conditions allow.

This Government is committed to helping to make the dream of homeownership a reality. Since 2010, over 758,000 households have been helped to purchase a home through Government-backed schemes including Help to Buy and Right to Buy. Our new First Homes scheme will provide homes at a discount of at least 30% for local first-time buyers helping bring homeownership back into reach.

We will publish a landmark White Paper this spring that will set out proposals to create a fairer and better quality private rented sector. We will consult on introducing a legally binding Decent Homes Standard in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) for the first time ever, explore a National Landlord Register, and bring forward measures to increase security for renters in the PRS, including through ending section 21 'no fault evictions'. We will bring forward legislation to implement these reforms set out in the white paper, when parliamentary time allows.