Housing and Planning Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Debate between Marcus Jones and Andrew Griffiths

Thursday 10th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The Minister must really be struggling to defend this policy if the best he can come up with is a Minister many, many years ago making what we all thought were personal comments. They were never accepted as Labour party policy or proposed in legislation. That was a speech in which she made personal comments. [Laughter.] I find it pretty shocking that Government Members are laughing, given that these clauses seek to take important rights from people. Labour did not take that approach either in government or in opposition, and the Minister should not suggest that we did.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend the Member for Burton wants to intervene on the hon. Member for City of Durham, and I understand why he wishes to do so. The then Housing Minister made those comments at a housing conference at the Adam Smith Institute in her capacity as a Minister of the Government of the time. I find it difficult to square that with the fact that the hon. Lady just said that they were personal comments. They were not personal comments; they were the comments of the Labour Government at the time. That is the direction that the Labour Government would have taken if they had been re-elected in 2010. The hon. Lady said that I am struggling to defend the policy—in a moment, I will give her some more detail about why I am confident in defending it—but I think she is struggling to put up an argument against it.