Housing
Debate between Lord Pickles and Alec Shelbrooke(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman needs to look a little outside London given where he represents. He could even look in some parts of London. Newham, for example, saw a drop of just under 1% in house prices. If we take out the London figures—figures for parts of London can be very spectacular—and look at the rest of the country, we will see that the increase in house prices has been very modest indeed. Not even in London have the figures reached where they were in 2007, so to talk about a housing bubble is ridiculous.
Alec Shelbrooke
As I tried gently to prod the shadow Secretary of State during his contribution, may I now say that I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for moving the debate beyond London and the south-east to areas in which my constituency and those of a great many of my hon. Friends are based?
Mr Pickles
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that. Our long-term economic plan is helping to pay off the deficit, keep interest rates down and let the housing market recover.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Pickles and Alec Shelbrooke(13 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Pickles
It is right and proper that we should respect the lifestyle choices of the Travelling community, but that does not give them particular rights over other citizens, particularly among the settled community. This Government will introduce special rules to ensure that authorities that provide pitches for Travellers receive a top-up against the new homes bonus, but the planning rules must be blind to a person’s ethnic background.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
18. Whether he plans to set the strategic housing land availability assessments of potential housing provided by unimplemented planning permissions against the five-year supply requirement.