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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential contribution of the construction of social housing to the economic recovery of the UK after the covid-19 outbreak.

The delivery of new social housing will contribute to economic recovery, in particular by supporting construction activity. The Government is committed to increasing the supply of social housing in view of the social and economic benefits this will generate. We have made £9 billion available through the Affordable Homes Programme to March 2022 to deliver approximately 250,000 new affordable homes in a wide range of tenures, including Social Rent, Shared Ownership and Rent to Buy. We announced at Budget that we will invest £12 billion to build affordable homes between 2021/22 and 2025/26 – the biggest cash investment in affordable housing for a decade.