Lord Shipley
Main Page: Lord Shipley (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Shipley's debates with the Cabinet Office
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberI agree with the thrust of my noble friend’s question. The other thing that we have done is that when surplus land becomes available from any government department it is put on a website, and the homes agency has the opportunity to acquire it before anybody else. It can put in a bid and do what he and the noble Lord suggested: to make the land available for housing. We are seeing more such transactions where the land is made available to local authorities or housing associations, and the Government are committed to providing 160,000 homes, I think, by March next year on land that was in government ownership in 2015.
My Lords, I refer the House to my interests in the register. A few days ago, at the Housing 2019 conference, the Prime Minister said that,
“we are delivering a whole new approach to social housing … Because this is a Government with a bold vision for housing and a willingness to act on it”.
Can the Minister can tell the House what that bold vision is for social housing?
Yes, indeed. We announced that we would abolish the cap on the housing revenue account, to enable local authorities to build up to £4 billion- worth of new homes and introduce a new generation of council housing.