Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Caroline Lucas

Monday 3rd June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Foster]

I encourage my hon. Friend to make use of the community rights that are available to ensure that that land has been registered as a community asset and encourage residents in the area to make use of the opportunities provided by the neighbourhood planning facilities that we have now made available.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

14. What steps he is taking to ensure that all tenants have the option to sign up to longer-term tenancies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

The initial fixed term under an assured shorthold tenancy is usually six months, but there is nothing to stop a landlord and tenant agreeing to a longer tenancy if that suits them both. I am encouraged to see that Build to Rent investors are keen to promote longer tenancies.

[Caroline Lucas]

In Brighton and Hove, we have an acute housing crisis with a private rented sector that is twice the national average at 21% and a generation of families living in uncertainty with short-term tenancies. Does the Minister agree that longer-term tenancies should be much more widely available and will he consider measures to incentivise landlords to offer longer-term tenancies through changes to capital gains tax and national insurance contributions, which have been proposed by a number of housing charities?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

If the Government are serious about increasing housing supply, will they look again at lifting the current cap on council borrowing for house building, and at providing direct capital spending to allow councils to build a mass programme of affordable housing?

[Mr Foster]

We are looking at the point the hon. Lady has raised, and an announcement will be made on 26 June.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Caroline Lucas

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Is the Minister aware that some housing associations are excluding poorer people from tenancies because of concern over their ability to pay in the face of Government welfare cuts? Southern Housing Group, for example, has said that reluctantly it tends to let affordable homes in new schemes only to working households. Will the Minister tell the House who exactly will house vulnerable people who are being excluded by housing associations as a result of this Government’s so-called reforms?

[Mr Foster]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing the House’s attention to that case. I was not aware of it and if she is prepared to provide me with the details I would be willing to meet her to discuss the issue she raises.

Wild Animals (Circuses)

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Caroline Lucas

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is very helpful in pointing out that that argument is a smokescreen that the Government are hiding behind. Indeed, the Head of Representation of the European Commission here in London recently wrote a letter to the Captive Animals Protection Society stating plainly, yet again, that the EU considered that

“the welfare of animals…is a matter best left to the judgement of Member States”.

It is not acceptable to have a policy which leaves us just hoping that regulations will have the same effect as a ban, particularly given that the secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors of Great Britain stated on the day after our last debate that he did not believe the new costs of regulation would discourage circuses from having performing animals. Instead, he stated that

“once we have robust regulation which reassures the public we may see some circuses return to using animals”.

How perverse would that be as an outcome of having licences?

[Mr Foster]

For the avoidance of doubt, will the hon. Lady confirm that the EU has not said just that these issues are best left to member states? The Commissioner has specifically said that they are the responsibility of member states. That is what gives us the legitimacy to have a ban, and to have it now.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is the responsibility of member states to act, and it is within our remit and right for us to do so. That is what the EU is saying, so it is incredibly perverse to try to do otherwise.

In conclusion, the Government’s judgment on this matter is woefully lacking. They have got it wrong on this one.