Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I know that the hon. Lady has worked extremely hard on this important issue together with my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy). We are getting more and more awareness of the impact of loneliness on people, and we all recognise that social isolation is an issue. The matter is of importance to the Government, and we are looking at a number of things that we can do to help reduce loneliness. However, this is not just about what the Government can do; as the hon. Lady says, it is about what communities and neighbours can do. In my constituency of Maidenhead, I am pleased to say that the churches work together on Christmas day to bring elderly people who would otherwise be on their own together for a community lunch. That is just one small example of what we can all do in our communities to help to overcome the problem of loneliness.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is very welcome that the Prime Minister is taking personal charge of building the homes that this country needs, which is such an important social justice issue for our country’s future. How does the Prime Minister see our doing that at the necessary scale and speed?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to build more homes and that we need to build them at scale. I am pleased to say that we saw 217,000 new homes built last year, which is a level of house building that has not been seen, apart from in one year, over the past 30 years, but we need to go further. That is why we have proposed several changes in terms of support for affordable housing, for councils and for people trying to get their foot on the housing ladder. We are also working with local authorities in a number of ways to ensure that land is released and that builders build out the planning permissions that they have.