Building Safety Bill (Seventh sitting)

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Christopher Pincher]

I will speak first to clause 24. The Government support the independent review’s recommendation that the new regulatory system should have

“a clear and easy route of redress to achieve resolution in cases where there is disagreement”.

I suspect that, from time to time, there will be disagreements. We are committed to ensuring that, where disputes occur in relation to regulatory decisions, they are resolved as quickly as possible for all parties involved. Our fundamental and overriding objective is to make sure that buildings and the people in them are safe.

The Building Safety Regulator will make a significant number of regulatory decisions under the new legislation. The approach to any disputed decision will be two-staged: first, an internal review by the regulator and following that, if necessary, an appeal to the tribunal. It will be in both parties’ interest that an independent team within the regulator carry out an initial review of any disputed decision. This will ensure swifter resolution for both parties.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

The Minister has mentioned a two-tier approach, so will he clarify whether that will put lengthy delays into the whole process?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend for asking that question. The very reason for having a two-stage process and an initial stage is to try to make sure that disputes that can be resolved quickly are resolved quickly and to minimise the number of disputes that go to the first-tier tribunal. That can be a more lengthy process. Our objective is to move as swiftly as we can through any disputes. We believe that will be for the public good.

As I have just said to my hon. Friend, clause 24 provides the legal basis for a person affected by the Building Safety Regulator’s decisions to request to have that decision internally reviewed. In the initial years of operation, we expect that there will be a substantial number of requests for review owing to the natural adjustment required by all industry actors to the new regulatory regime. We expect, and we intend, the Building Safety Regulator to make every effort to resolve disputes at the internal review stage. We believe that will be the swiftest way of achieving resolution. The right of appeal to the courts remains because individuals will be able to appeal against a decision made on review to the tribunal if they think it is unsatisfactory.

Building Safety Bill (Eighth sitting)

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Again, we accept the provisions in the clause giving the Welsh Government the desired and important flexibility particularly for buildings that are at risk. Buildings at risk have caused considerable debate and the Minister has referred to the original recommendations by Dame Judith Hackitt. There has been lots of debate in the built environment and among key witnesses. I know that members of the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government have heard similar evidence advocating for a broader definition of what is at risk. Clearly, many residents and leaseholders are in buildings below 18 metres that are certainly at risk.

I referred earlier to the fire in a care home in Crewe, not far from my constituency in the north-west of England. It was a home for vulnerable people and was constructed out of interesting materials and the results were unfortunately all too plain to see. Thank the Lord, nobody lost their life, but they did lose their home and their possessions. They were definitely at risk. In Runcorn in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), the Decks development has had a live application to the building safety fund. A number of buildings are 18 metres and above so they are in scope of the definition in the Bill, but some are below 18 metres and they are constructed with even more inflammable material. Again, they are very much at risk.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

It was Dame Judith Hackitt who initially suggested that the threshold be 30 metres. Does the hon, Gentleman agree that 18 metres or seven storeys is significantly more ambitious?

[Mike Amesbury]

Yes, but what I heard from the witnesses —the evidence is crystal clear—is that there are buildings, such as hospitals, that have vulnerable people. One thousand hospitals will not be within the scope of the Bill, because they are below 18 metres. According to the Department’s own figures, 13,200 care homes will not be classed as at risk under the current regulatory landscape.

The clause will provide that flexibility, which the Minister referred to. If there are thematic incidents, fires or failures related to building safety, the Secretary of State has the welcome flexibility of the regulator in the future. We certainly want the definition of risk on the record, as witnesses have requested throughout.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I certainly think that trade bodies and professional organisations should develop suitable ways for their members to demonstrate their competence. I also want to ensure that the Building Safety Regulator has a broad reach within the understandable constraints of not losing or diluting its very important focus on high-rise and other in-scope residential buildings.

I will reflect on my hon. Friend’s point about reaching out to higher and further education providers, but if I may stretch the point a little, it is certainly the case that by working with our colleagues in BEIS and across other Government Departments, we are building a skill set in the construction industry—young people going into construction and becoming bricklayers or skill supervisors. We need to ensure that they have the wherewithal to build their careers, but we also need to ensure that their professional trade bodies are providing them with competence, and that that competence can be properly assessed by the Building Safety Regulator and its officials.

For organisations, the requirements will relate to the organisational capability—the ability of an organisation to carry out its functions properly under the building regulations. Where the principal designer or principal contractor is an organisation, subsection (3) enables building regulations to require the organisation to ensure that the individuals leading the work have the appropriate skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours to manage their functions. To provide more detail on how the competence requirements will apply, we have published draft regulations to sit alongside the Bill.

[Selaine Saxby]

Will my right hon. Friend make it clear that this new regime for driving up competence levels will not have a negative impact on industry capacity, particularly in areas such as mine—this might be slightly outside the scope of the Bill—where the sector already has issues with recruitment?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. We certainly do not want to see skills and capacity further stretched. I will give her one example of the stimulant action that the Government have taken to support the sector. Last November we announced funding just touching £700,000 to train up 2,000 external wall system 1 assessors. I believe that their training commenced in January this year, so they will be coming on stream to provide the sorts of services that are needed. We certainly want to ensure that, in that instance and others, we have appropriate capacity to do the work required.

In addition, the Government intend to provide statutory guidance in the form of an approved document to support duty holders in meeting these requirements. This is a short but important clause, and I commend it to the Committee.

Affordable Housing in the South-West

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend makes a tremendously good point. It is important that planning applications are seen in the round. As I will go on to describe, we need to maintain the beauty and special qualities of our rural towns and villages, while at the same time providing the homes that people so badly need.

In 2019-20, the total housing stock in England increased by about 244,000 homes. The number of new homes each year has indeed been growing for several years, but still not quickly enough to meet the demand. Estimates put the number of new homes needed at up to 345,000 per year. That means 42,000 new homes are needed each year in the south-west alone, and yet we are building fewer than half the homes required to plug the gap. We must do more, not only to match supply to demand but crucially to ensure that new homes are genuinely affordable and built where they are needed most—and, yes, that does mean protecting our rural villages from overdevelopment.

As Mrs Thatcher said, borrowing the words of the Scottish Unionist Noel Skelton, Britain should be a “property-owning democracy”. Back in the 1960s, when the Government were building more than 300,000 new houses a year, that ambition was achievable, but the same is not true today. Annual supply needs to increase by a further 23% by the mid-2020s to meet the Government’s own housing target, and by another 39% to reach the National Housing Federation’s recommendations.

There is general agreement that we need more homes, but there is less agreement, both in politics and in the housing industry, about how best to achieve that step change. I believe that there are three key areas where the Government and industry can work together to meet housing need. The first is public sector land reform. Priority for public land sales should change from maximising cash to the provision of public housing.

Secondly, we must adequately invest in building new affordable and sustainable homes where they are needed, creating jobs across construction and the supply chain and building the confidence of consumers, investors and developers. The recent £8.6 billion funding allocation from the affordable homes programme is a good start, but it does not cover the long-term funding gap and the structural barriers that have to be addressed.

Thirdly, there needs to be greater flexibility in the delivery of affordable homes. The most effective way to do that would be for the Government to allow developers to decide what tenure their homes should be on completion of a property so that we generate solutions that respond to the latest local need and allow the building of the right homes to continue in all economic conditions.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Does he agree that in coastal constituencies such as mine, it is about not just building homes but the people living in those homes? At least one in five new properties becomes an Airbnb or a second home, and we are increasingly looking at ghost towns in the winter. We need to address that in the planning Bill.

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The growth of second homes that are rented out and do not become family homes is a problem throughout the south-west. That is precisely the opposite of what we require, so I could not agree more.

I hope that the reforms in the forthcoming planning Bill will have a significant impact on that and much else, and a positive one on housing delivery. There is anxiety in rural Somerset, where we suffer from predatory applications by developers. Our current planning system has too much bureaucracy and too little engagement with local communities, and too much advantage is given to large property developers to the detriment of local businesses and our town and village communities.

The way to address the housing shortage is through developing brownfield sites and easing the process determining change of use designations, rather than through giving an automatic zoned presumption in favour and removing mechanisms for democratic oversight.

There also needs to be greater clarity in the three land categories, with stronger safeguards against unwanted development. The permission in principle approach must be improved, with a final say from our local planning authorities, to protect our communities. I look forward to the Bill being published and will look at it closely, because at the heart of planning are the homes we live in, the schools for our children and the protection of our countryside.

This debate is about the entire south-west region, but across most of Somerset there is a particular and urgent issue preventing almost all new housing delivery. Somerset is in the midst of a phosphate neutrality crisis, which is preventing housing development and creating a significant backlog. This issue, which relates to the protection of the Somerset moors and levels under the Ramsar convention, is costing the Somerset economy millions of pounds and derailing house building in our county. However, it is also of broader national importance, with nutrient issues affecting 34 local authorities in England, delaying the construction of 30,000 to 40,000 homes at the last count.

The publication of a phosphorous budget calculator, which has been approved by Natural England, is a positive step, but the issue very much still rumbles on. In the short term, it looks as though Somerset would benefit from the development of a phosphorous trading auction platform, like that being trialled for nitrates in the Solent, to give small and medium-sized developers a mechanism to provide mitigation. I know that efforts in this area are already under way, but providing mitigation typically involves nature-based projects that take land from agricultural production. This land-hungry approach would negatively impact the farming industry and be slow to become operational. In Somerset, for example, the construction of a colossal 630 hectares of wetland would be needed to offset the 11,000 homes currently delayed across the four affected local authorities. It can take at least three years to construct an established wetland and assess its effectiveness before anyone would be able to move into their new homes, creating more delay and worsening the local housing crisis.

It appears that the more expedient solution is rapid capital investment in sewage treatment works to capture nutrients closer to the source before they enter our watercourses and reducing the mitigation required for new developments. I would ask the Minister to work closely with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as I am sure he is doing, to find a solution to this problem as a matter of urgency.

The south-west has suffered from a historical fiscal concentration on London and the south-east, alongside soaring house prices, so if we are to rebalance our economy and properly level up, investment in genuinely affordable housing will be key. I am ready to work with groups such as Homes for the South West, a coalition of the south-west’s largest housing associations, to help to facilitate that and generate not just new homes but the jobs and investment that our region and communities need so urgently.

Planning

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) for securing this debate. He has already highlighted many of the points that I intend to raise. Like him, I am keen to work with the Minister to ensure that we have a solution that works for local communities.

Planning is broken in North Devon. We can illustrate why we need reform quite dramatically. We have a local plan, yet our local community does not believe in it; our local council votes against developments in the local plan, even though it is on brownfield sites. We have exceeded the number of houses that are built in the community, yet we have nowhere for local people to live. For over four years we have built more than we required, yet we still do not have places local people can live in. We have a conservation office and a planning department from which most developments take up to a decade to emerge.

We have always been a community that welcomes tourists and second home owners, but unfortunately that dynamic is now slightly tilted in the wrong direction. New builds are snapped up as second homes or holiday lets, sometimes by locals because they can make so much money. Why would they rent out a property for a few hundred pounds a month when you can make several thousand a week up here in North Devon?

Post pandemic, North Devon is one of the top 10 places in the country to move to, and I agree that it is a fantastic place to live. However, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, we need people to move here, to get jobs, to stay here and to build communities here with their families. Building homes is not about houses; it is about communities. It is not about a winter ghost town. Croyde, which boasts one of the best surf beaches in the country, is currently 64% second home-owned. During the pandemic, in the village where I live—where I am speaking from this afternoon—mine was one of just six houses out of the 30 in my close that was occupied. We also have derelict homes, as well as second homes and Airbnbs.

We really need the council to have more teeth to stop new developments going to more second homes or additional Airbnbs and put in place covenants to ensure that local communities can build more family homes here in North Devon. We need them to be affordable so people can live here. Developing in North Devon is difficult; we are remote, we are rural, we do not have a big work force and it is hard to transport materials here. Overlay that with the time it takes to get things out of planning, and actually it is quite a hostile environment for developers. That is not to mention the opposition from many locals, who see that we do not need additional homes; we need the ones we have here already to be available to local people. We have developers facing death threats here in North Devon. We really do need some interventions to enable communities to reform.

The market is broken. In the village where I am this afternoon, a two-bedroom apartment in need of renovation is currently on the market at £750,000—with a communal garden. Something is not working here in North Devon. The final point I will make is that we need to find a way to ensure that councils can raise revenue when people wish to convert a property into a holiday let, and that there are more protections in the market. The private rental sector is now non-existent here; we need to find a way to ensure that there are more privately rented properties, as well as homes that are affordable for local families to buy. There is no point in coming on holiday to North Devon if we have nobody working in our bars and restaurants and nobody able to service visitors when they get here. Communities should not be full of empty houses for half of the year, they should be full of family homes.

Employment Rights

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I know my hon. Friend understands that right hon. and hon. Members across the House want the UK to be on the front foot on workers’ rights after we leave the EU. Will he offer me a categorical assurance that that will be the case and that there will be no degradation in our world-leading protection?

[Paul Scully]

Yes, absolutely that is the case. We are determined to ensure that this is the best place not only to set up and have a business, but to work—for workers’ rights, high pay and a highly productive economy. That can only be done by valuing our people.

Covid-19: Hospitality Industry

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for the hospitality industry throughout the covid-19 pandemic.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for co-sponsoring it. Without a doubt, the hospitality sector has been one of the hardest hit throughout the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. It will have been shut for 10 out of 14 months when it eventually reopens. I do not believe that many of us foresaw that a year ago when we entered the first lockdown.

Support for the sector is extensive across the House, as shown by the number of contributors today. This debate is almost as booked up as I understand much of the hospitality sector itself is, when allowed to reopen. With that in mind, I will keep my remarks brief and will not take interventions, to enable as many colleagues as possible to speak.

In 2019, the hospitality sector contributed £59.3 billion in gross value added to the UK economy—around 3% of total UK economic output. At the start of last year, there were almost a quarter of a million hospitality businesses in the UK. The sector is vital to my North Devon constituency, which is proud to boast 105 pubs, with almost 10% of all businesses being in the hospitality sector.

The latest research by UKHospitality shows that the sector will have lost £86 billion in revenue by the end of March 2021, down 68% on pre-pandemic figures. It would have been more were it not for the unprecedented support packages given by the Chancellor, combined with the innovation shown by the sector in adapting their businesses to become covid compliant, increase outdoor capacity, and become take-outs. Our North Devon “Take Out to Help Out” competition saw thousands of residents vote to support their favourite take-out that has helped them through lockdown, and many congratulations to the winner, Nartnapa Thai Kitchen in Lynton.

The sector is also wracked with coronavirus-related debt—an estimated £2 billion in rent debt and £6 billion in loans and other finance—which makes the recovery that bit more challenging. As someone who ran a debt-financed small business for 15 years, I know the toll that that type of balance sheet can take on small and medium-sized businesses, of which the sector has so many, and the extra pressure that it puts on achieving profitability, particularly for seasonal businesses that are so dependent on their summers to see them through the lean winter months.

Even assuming that the road map stays on track, the sector cannot fully reopen until 21 June. Some 60% of pubs may not reopen on 12 April, despite the Government’s relaxing regulations to enable them to trade outdoors more easily. That will mean that the support will taper off before there is a full return to profitability, which is forecast to take at least six months after the restrictions are fully removed. In short, the Government support may be ending too early relative to their lockdown-lifting road map.

This summer will no doubt be busy for UK hospitality. We know that pubs are one of the top three reasons tourists visit the UK, so their survival is linked to our inbound tourism and its associated economic benefits. As we move into winter, wet-led pubs in particular are very dependent on their locals returning to the bar, which we know did not happen to historical levels last winter. Going back to the pub is a much easier ask than so many of the others that we have endured over the last year, but have our behaviours fundamentally changed during the pandemic? I hope not, as in many rural villages in constituencies such as mine the pub is the heart and soul of the village. We need to ensure that they can return to their former vibrancy at last orders.

Calls are increasing for a review of beer duty to target support into our pubs, bars, and clubs, which could be balanced with duty rises in the off-trade, given the ever growing debt that the country is in. The Chancellor has shown throughout this pandemic how quickly he and his colleagues in the Treasury can pivot and adapt to create new lifelines for businesses. While I pay tribute to his excellent work, perhaps the job is not yet done for hospitality.

I believe that a draught beer duty would be targeted, quickly actioned support and could play a crucial role in stopping so many of our vibrant pubs and other hospitality businesses from going under later in the year. Our pubs provide a safer environment for alcohol consumption than elsewhere, and we should do all we can to encourage people to return safely as soon as possible.

There are now 600,000 fewer jobs in the sector than before covid hit our shores, despite the unprecedented support of furlough. As hospitality businesses look to reopen, I hope that they will engage with the new Government packages to get people back into work, such as the kickstart scheme, and reach out to their local Jobcentre Plus. I know that in rural North Devon, hospitality businesses have not always engaged with their local jobcentre, with local ads or posters in the window historically sufficing, but a wide range of highly qualified people are now unfortunately looking for work and vacancies may well be filled more rapidly through this route than those pre-pandemic.

There are other areas in the broader hospitality sector whose pandemic has also been problematic, such as our contract caterers and wholesalers. These businesses were not required to close, but their trade has been limited mostly to the public sector, and they have unfortunately missed out on many grant payments. Breweries, especially local microbreweries such as GT Ales in Wrafton, despite reinventing themselves for home delivery, have had a challenging time.

The wedding industry and its supply chain, quite rightly, have been repeatedly highlighted as a sector in need, the important big day being intricately linked with hospitality. It is estimated that more than 200,000 weddings have been either cancelled or postponed since the first lockdown and that the sector to date has lost at least £6.4 billion, a figure that continues to rise. It is fair to say that the hospitality sector has received an unprecedented level of support across VAT reductions, business rate holidays, grants, loans, the job retention scheme, the freezing of alcohol rates and a wealth of other measures.

I have been in contact with my local hospitality sector and the national hospitality sector throughout this pandemic, and I very much hope that dialogue will continue as we emerge and build back better. The Chancellor said that he would do “whatever it takes” and indeed he has, but to prevent our vital and much loved hospitality sector suffering from long covid, they may just need a little more creative support in the coming months.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We now have a three-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches. That will be on the screen in the Chamber and on screens virtually.

--- Later in debate ---

[Selaine Saxby]

This is obviously the time of the evening when we should all be going to the pub or to our much-loved bars here in the House, where I probably owe colleagues who did not get to speak today a pint. I know they would have spoken with passion in support of their hospitality businesses and whetted appetites with their tantalising take-outs.

I thank the Minister for his response. He knows that a cold beer is on the bar whenever he wants to visit North Devon; I hope that the duty on it will reflect the calls made across the Chamber today. As the self-appointed one-woman tourist board for North Devon, I invite all Members to visit when the time is right. I hope that they will then understand why I am quite so passionate about ensuring support for the sector here, across the country and particularly in North Devon. I thank everyone for taking part today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The Question is as on the Order Paper. As many as are of that opinion say “Aye.” [Hon. Members: “Aye.”] I was looking for a more enthusiastic “Aye!” about pubs opening. Shall we do it again? As many as are of that opinion say “Aye!” [Hon. Members: “Aye!”] To the contrary “No”—the Ayes have it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered support for the hospitality industry throughout the covid-19 pandemic.

Uber: Supreme Court Ruling

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

We will make sure, first, that Uber complies with this judgment. Secondly, we also want to ensure that all employees—all workers—exactly know their rights and status, so that they can look at a number of the other taxi and hire firms available, should they so require.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) [V]]

Ministers have been honest with the country that the Government cannot save every job as we emerge from the pandemic. We must ensure, however, that support is available for those who do find themselves out of work, so will the Minister confirm that the Government will prioritise making support and resources available to jobseekers as well as the provision of retraining for those who need it? How can we ensure that this is effective in very rural areas such as North Devon?

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We talk a lot about reopening the economy, but the recovery of the economy is so important. That is why, although we have protected jobs, livelihoods and businesses, we must make sure that people coming back into work can flourish and have a course of self-development. That is why there are now a number of schemes available in Jobcentre Plus that are being rolled out to improve skills.

Oral Answers to Questions

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and we are actively considering it. We have responded to a consultation on how we can improve access to public buildings and to homes for disabled people, and if there is more we can do, we should do it.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) [V]]

  I thank my right hon. Friend for the support given to councils over the past 12 months, but as we move into what will hopefully be a busy summer for tourism in areas such as North Devon, based on the experience of last summer, some smaller district and parish councils that operate car parks, toilets, and waste and dog bin collections struggle to finance and maintain them effectively to the understandably higher standards that are needed, so can he advise what support is being given to ensure that councils with tourism hotspots are prepared for the likely influx of visitors this summer?

[Luke Hall]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. We are hugely grateful to parish and town councils, which have been on the frontline in responding to this pandemic. That is why the Secretary of State wrote to them earlier this year to encourage principal councils to work with them to discuss funding. Councils in Devon will receive a further £31 million in un-ringfenced covid funding next year, which will help to ensure that their facilities are maintained and ready for the summer. Finally, I am delighted that my hon. Friend’s constituency has received an offer of £6.5 million from our future high streets fund, which I understand will go towards refurbishment of the historic market quarter.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

Given what the hon. Gentleman sometimes says in this place and on social media, one might be forgiven for thinking that he is the enemy of everybody some of the time. We will reform section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 when we bring forward the renters’ reform Bill, which we will do in due course.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

It is crucial that we ensure that the most vulnerable in society are supported, especially throughout this pandemic. Is it not also the case that we should recognise that not every tenant is unable to pay their rent? Where necessary, should we not be supporting the landlords who rely on the income from their rental properties to live on or who have mortgages of their own to pay?

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Tenants should continue to pay their rent where they can. Where they can but will not, we have changed the Coronavirus Act 2020 to make it easier for landlords to act. We think we have struck a fair balance between the rights of tenants and the rights of landlords, and I ask the House to support it.

Rented Homes: End of Evictions Ban

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his Budget statement and subsequently, has announced a raft of infrastructure measures that will stimulate our economy. He also, of course, announced the biggest injection of cash into affordable homes in 15 years, since the 2006 to 2011 period, through the affordable homes programme. We have also taken measures to allow local authorities to act more quickly and effectively to build social homes if they wish. From memory, I think that we have built something like 150,000 homes for social rent in the last few years, and of course more will be built. We have a plan to invest in our infrastructure that will support the hon. Lady’s constituents and mine.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

The support that the Government have given to small councils, such as mine in north Devon, and fabulous homeless charities, such as the Freedom Centre in Barnstaple, to help people off the streets has been welcome. With the moratorium on evictions ending, however, can the Minister assure me that all that good work and support will be backed up by long-term plans to secure affordable and sustainable housing for my most vulnerable constituents?

[Christopher Pincher]

I commend my hon. Friend’s constituents, and the Freedom Centre in particular, for all the work they have been doing for her constituents, their neighbours, during the emergency. I absolutely commit to her that, as I just said to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), we will bring forward the biggest investment in affordable housing in the last 10 to 15 years between 2021 and 2026. That builds on the £9 billion that we have invested in the existing affordable homes programme, which has helped to build 241,000 homes in the last year. That is a signal achievement; we intend to go further.