Lord Spicer
Main Page: Lord Spicer (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the Prime Minister has not said that £450,000 is the price for an affordable home in London: it is the cap at which an affordable house can be provided in London. I apologise but I did not hear the second part of the noble Baroness’s question because there was a slight disturbance. Perhaps she would like to repeat it.
Baroness Grender
I will repeat the second part. With the Housing and Planning Bill, which sells off social housing but has currently no legal guarantee of replacement, how is it possible to interpret it as anything other than an abandonment of homelessness strategy by this Government and a return to the 1980s when kids coming out of care and troops returning home had no choice but to sleep rough?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the Government are committed to building 1 million new homes by 2020 which will include affordable houses and homes for rent with a mix of different tenures. I must repeat that we will maintain and protect funding for local authorities, which by 2019-20 will be £315 million.
Lord Spicer
My Lords, as the housing Minister who introduced the rough sleepers allowance, I often wonder whether I was right to do so. Would it not have been better to have introduced more money for the provision of hostel places? Can I ask my noble friend how many hostel places are available today as compared with the number of those sleeping rough?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I cannot give an exact figure for the number of hostel places, but what I can say to my noble friend is that I think he was absolutely right to do the work that he did. We introduced a £20 million homelessness transition fund that has supported the rollout of “No Second Night Out” across England, which has been very effective.