Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend will be reassured to hear that under the community right to build, which is one of the proposals in the Bill, local communities will be able to vote for additional homes, for example in a village that is trying to keep the post office and the local school alive. They will be able to do so without so much of the bureaucracy that there has been, and without the regional development agency telling them that their village is not where it wants homes to be built. It will happen on a local neighbourhood scale, so communities will be very much in control. They will own the housing trust that builds the homes and will be able to ensure that those homes stay in local use for as long as they like.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I need to draw the House’s attention to an entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford). To avoid any misunderstanding, I add that he is my partner.

It is eight months since the Minister entered office and asked us to judge him on his record of delivering housing. What has happened since then? Planning permissions have fallen off a cliff, we have the worst record of house building since 1923 and now 21 Tory council leaders in the south-east say that the new homes bonus will not deliver the homes that are needed. Does he agree with them, and what is his time scale for reconsidering the level of the bonus if it does not work, as they fear?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for pointing out that I have now been in the post for eight months, because that happens to be exactly the time for which my four predecessors, including the current shadow Secretary of State, stayed in office.

House building had fallen to 1923 levels under the previous Government, with their top-down planning and regional spatial strategies. I am confident that the fact that we have scrapped that structure and introduced the new homes bonus, which, as we have heard today, is about to start paying out significant sums, will reverse the fall in house building and affordable house building that we so tragically saw under the previous Government.