Point of Order
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Have you had any notice about whether a Communities and Local Government Minister intends to make a statement on devolution to a combined authority in East Anglia? As we speak, the chief executive of Adnams brewery and Lord Heseltine are shuttling around the three counties of East Anglia offering jobs, offering budgets, getting rid of public bodies and, in short, rearranging this country’s constitutional settlement on the hoof. Is it not incumbent on Ministers to explain to the House what changes are envisaged and to demonstrate that there is proper accountability for such decisions in respect of existing and future legislation?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I have just checked, so I can say that we have received no notice—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman might be interested to hear the response, although I presume he knows it already. I assure him that we have had no notification at this stage. Nothing has been received by the Clerk or the Speaker’s Office. I can, however, tell him that Government Front Benchers are all ears and will be taking that point away. It is certainly now on the record.
Let us see whether we can now make some progress.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Lord Jackson of Peterborough
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I need to bring in another four speakers before bringing in the Minister at 10.37 pm.
Mr Jackson
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and lovely to hear her dulcet tones, which brought back flashbacks of 17 sittings looking in detail at the 145 clauses and 11 schedules of the Bill. As I say, it is lovely to see her in her place and not having been subject to the night of the long knives as a result of the Labour reshuffle, if indeed the reshuffle is concluded, as someone suggested on Twitter, by 4 o’clock tomorrow—
Mr Deputy Speaker
I am sure you do, Mr Jackson, but I can assure you that I do not want to hear the history of the reshuffle. Come on, we could be here all night!
Mr Jackson
It was longer than one of Britney Spears’s marriages—that is what I wanted to say, Mr Deputy Speaker.
What was depressing about our Committee sittings was the conservative nature of the debate and the stasis of what we got from the Labour party, which did not move on. If there is a housing crisis, we need to find radical ways forward to deal with it. It is not as if we are leaving it simply to the private sector. This week’s announcement of the building of 13,000 units on public sector land provides an example of where we are using the might of Government to work with the private sector to deliver. To appreciate that, one needs to look only at Help to Buy, Help to Buy ISAs and other Government initiatives to help small and medium-sized builders, for instance.
The fact is that we have a mandate for starter homes. The hon. Member for City of Durham asked what changed between March and May. With all due respect, let me tell her that we won the general election and her party lost it. We have a mandate to deliver starter homes, and the hon. Lady does not do justice to the wider issues in housing, planning and development. She fails to take into account some pertinent issues. When in power, her Government failed to deliver infrastructure planning properly. We had housing information packs and we had eco-cities. All those things failed. We had density targets. We had regional spatial strategies, which were a disaster and did not deliver homes. Under that Government, the smallest number of homes were built since 1923, there was the largest increase in young people in temporary accommodation and housing waiting lists increased massively.