Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because it is an extremely important one. That is why we changed the policy from the one adopted by the previous Government, under which there was a strong, blanket nudge to use brownfield land. We are saying that if the brownfield land is of high environmental value, it should not be a priority for development.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

12. What recent assessment he has made of the results of Government schemes to increase house building.

[The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)]

The Government monitor the rate of house building very closely. For example, we have completed 58,000 affordable homes in 2011-12. We assess that to be one third higher than the average delivery of affordable homes in the 10 years before the last general election.

[Andrew Gwynne]

But the Prime Minister over-hyped his NewBuy guarantee by saying that it would help around 100,000 families to access affordable mortgages—so far, only 1,500 households have benefited from that initiative. Will the Minister pull his finger out and help the 98,500 families that were promised access to affordable mortgages by the Prime Minister?

[Mr Prisk]

The NewBuy and Firstbuy schemes have helped nearly 20,000 people, which is in sharp contrast to Labour’s social homebuy scheme, which was launched in 2005. It promised to help 5,000 people, but five years later had helped just 384.