Building Homes

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

Let me start by welcoming the right hon. Lady to her place. I wish her luck for her leadership campaign, now that she has confirmed that she is running. It was her ambition all along to be Leader of the Opposition, not mine. I must say that she seems to be taking to opposition very naturally. I think she will find herself comfortable for a long, long time on the Opposition Benches. She had a lot to say in her response and I will come to the substance of it in a moment. She has already put in quite a few written questions. I look forward to many more from her once she has had a chance to read and digest her brief after the election.

There were a couple of things that I am not quite sure the right hon. Lady understood. First—this is critical—the British people kicked the Conservatives out of office in a landslide. Secondly, why was that? Let me remind her. The Government in which she served left us to clear up the mess. They crashed the economy and trashed our public services. They bankrupted Britain and they covered it up. They threw the book at the doctors and then they doctored the books. She keeps speaking about the Tories’ record on housing, but I remind her again that year after year the Tories failed to meet their housing targets. She speaks about the Mayor of London and the bizarre figures they set for him, but the Conservative Government—talking of promises they can’t keep—failed to meet their own target in every single year.

On the right hon. Lady’s question about the NPPF consultation, it starts today, for eight weeks. We are asking people to engage. It is an incredibly detailed consultation, because we mean business. It will come as no surprise that the work needed to be done after the disaster of the last Tory Government, which ripped up the NPPF and made a right mess of it. The right hon. Lady talked about the affordable homes grant. The former Tory Secretary of State handed £1.9 billion of vital funds back to the Treasury. This Government will, working with Homes England, make it more flexible to get the homes we need.

Members of the party opposite—

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

You are just reading! You are supposed to be answering the questions, not just reading out what has been written for you to read.

[Angela Rayner]

These are the answers to the questions. [Interruption.] No, they are the bits that I have written, actually, in regard to her questions.

Members of the party opposite are now talking to themselves and not the country. The right hon. Lady mentioned chaos and uncertainty; I really do not know how Opposition Members can say that with a straight face after the chaos and uncertainty that we have seen, with countless Housing Secretaries not knowing what was going on.

In every inner-city area—this is in answer to the question—there are increases in the targets. I remind Members that we inherited the most acute housing crisis in living memory. I say to the right hon. Lady that the green belt definition is in the consultation document, and I suggest that she read it. It also tackles the issue of “beautiful homes”, We will build homes at scale and they will be beautiful. We will protect the natural environment, and we will make sure that people have the homes that they deserve and need.

I was astonished by what the right hon. Lady said about councils and council leaders. The council leaders I have spoken to are overjoyed by the fact that the Tories were kicked out. They say to me that they have been left in a dire situation. I know that Opposition Members like to think that that is just Labour councils, but councils across the political spectrum have been left in a disastrous situation, because the party opposite did not build the homes that people need. We have a homelessness crisis in this country. People under the age of 30 cannot get homes now. It is impossible for people to get on to the housing ladder. That is the failure of the last Conservative Government, and that is what we are going to fix. That is what we are going to get on and do.