Business of the House

Andrew Love Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. He will recall that we published the nuisance calls action plan on 30 March. Since January 2012, the regulator has issued monetary penalties totalling just over £2.5 million to companies for breaching its rules, but in response to the action plan further work will be done with the Office of Communications to see whether the maximum penalty might be increased, in order to give a real sanction for those who are making nuisance calls, which is contrary to the code.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

With the lowest level of house building since the 1920s, may we have a debate on housing supply? The Government are taking many measures to increase housing demand, and all that those measures have led to is price inflation. Is there not an opportunity in the next few weeks to discuss housing supply? The measures in the Queen’s Speech are totally inadequate. We need real action and we need it now.

[Mr Lansley]

On the contrary, the Government are taking action and indeed the Queen’s Speech included measures that—as the hon. Gentleman may have seen—will come forward in the Infrastructure Bill, which will further support house building in this country. However, 445,000 new houses have been built under this Government. We are recovering from the position we were left by the last Government, where house building fell off a cliff in the latter part of 2008. A good illustration of that recovery is that last year there were 216,000 new planning permissions.