Spring Statement
Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Rosena Allin-Khan(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
By 2021, this Government will have cut £1 billion from the Metropolitan police budget. That is why I wrote the Chancellor a letter, signed by every single London Labour MP, asking for more funding to tackle the rise in violent crime. Can the Chancellor confirm how much additional funding has been allocated to the London Met?
Mr Hammond
I cannot. The £100 million that we have announced today will be for the police as a whole, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will engage with police chiefs. If the hon. Lady is concerned, as she obviously is, about policing in London, may I suggest that she gets in touch with the Labour Mayor of London and asks him to get off his backside and do something about it?
Autumn Statement
Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Rosena Allin-Khan(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Affordable house building last year fell to its lowest level since 1991. In my borough, Wandsworth, the Conservative council approved the building of over 10,000 homes at Battersea power station and Nine Elms, 13% of which were deemed affordable. However, the cheapest home there is a studio flat costing £400,000. These are not genuinely affordable homes for local residents; they are used as gold bricks for overseas developers. Can the Chancellor tell me today what is an affordable home?
Mr Hammond
There are two points here. We have, of course, a definition of affordable housing, which we use in statutory terms, but there is a much broader consensus in the House that we need to make all housing across the UK more affordable, including housing that people buy in the marketplace. To do that, we have to address fundamentally some of the challenges with land supply, particularly in London and other high-demand areas. As I said earlier, my right hon. Friend the Communities and Local Government Secretary will introduce a housing White Paper, which will address these more strategic issues.