Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

I assume that the hon. Lady is making some kind of spending commitment on behalf of the Labour party—an unlimited one. Local schemes are put in place by local councils. We have offered them transitional relief to help them. It is a ludicrous argument to say that poor people and people who are struggling hard do not pay council tax. The problem with the hon. Lady is that she belongs to the political classes, who are out of touch with the needs of ordinary people.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

12. What steps he is taking to increase the supply of social housing.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

We are on course to deliver the Government’s programme of 170,000 affordable homes by March 2015. A further £23 billion of investment will deliver 165,000 affordable homes between 2015 and 2018. That will be the fastest rate of affordable house building for at least 20 years.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

I thank the Minister for that positive report. Will he assure the House that the energy performance of new social and affordable homes will not be downgraded using any of the foolish loopholes in the Infrastructure Bill, and that we will get genuinely zero-carbon homes in the social and affordable sector?

[Stephen Williams]

The Government are determined that we will. We tightened up the energy efficiency standards for new house building in April and we have announced a commitment to zero-carbon homes from 2016. It is important, however, to get smaller house builders back into the market, which is why we are consulting on a modest exemption.