Building Homes and Renewing Communities

Debate between Angela Rayner and Clive Efford

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My simple answer is that we are doing that. It is why we strengthened the national planning policy framework. As I have said, this is not just about one lever; a number of factors need to be considered. We have been doing that, and that includes having mandatory housing targets and plans for local areas. We are strengthening, we are pushing, and we are making sure that we fix the mess that the previous Government left us.

[Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)]

It was a pleasure to join my right hon. Friend at Greenwich council’s development of 435 council properties in my constituency for the launch of the social and affordable housing programme. Some 70,000 homes are planned, and that is welcome and overdue. However, my constituency and ones like it have a lot of sports grounds, and as we push for more land, the temptation is for owners of those grounds to lock the gates, in the hope that they will make a windfall from developing those sites. Will my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that that will not be allowed under the programme to build the housing that we need?

[Angela Rayner]

It was a great pleasure to visit the site with my hon. Friend. I outlined in my opening statement something that touched me, which is how people spoke about getting a home and the conditions they had before. They literally said it was like winning the lottery—it was life-changing. As I outlined to the shadow Secretary of State earlier, I think about those children affected, especially those impacted by the acute housing crisis that London faces. I congratulate the Mayor of London and London councils working to deal with that. We announced the funding grant to help London with the particular problem it has had. My hon. Friend is right to raise the subject of protection of spaces. That is what we have done through strengthening the national planning policy framework. The Housing Minister would be happy to chat more with my hon. Friend about that—I am sure they already do, as they are neighbours—but it is important that we continue that work, too.

School Funding

Debate between Angela Rayner and Clive Efford

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I want to make some progress.

Let us consider the context.

“Britain has a deep social mobility problem, and for this generation in particular, it is getting worse not better”—

as a result of—

“an unfair education system, a two-tier labour market, an imbalanced economy, and an unaffordable housing market.”

That was the conclusion of the Government’s own Social Mobility Commission. And what about our education system?

“We still have too many underperforming schools and low overall levels of numeracy and literacy. England remains the only OECD country where 16 to 24-year-olds are no more literate or numerate than 55 to 64-year-olds.”

Again, that is not my conclusion, but that of the Government’s own industrial strategy Green Paper, which quite rightly makes it clear just how central education is to our economy, especially following Brexit.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the broken pledge on increasing funding for schools. Is she aware that 74 out of 77 schools—that is 96% of them—face real-terms cuts of more than £200,000 by 2019? How is that defensible? How is it evidence of a Government who care about education?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—there is no justification for these cuts.

The Secretary of State has, of course, unveiled the proposed solution, her so-called national fair funding formula, which she presented to her Back Benchers as a kind of reverse distribution. On the Government’s own figures, they are quite literally robbing Peterborough to pay for Poole, but it will not take long for Members on both sides of the House to discover that not only is there nothing fair about the proposed funding formula but that it will not make up for overall real-terms cuts. Concerns about what that means for our constituents are shared on both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) has said that his message to the Minister for School Standards is:

“I don’t get this and I don’t think it’s particularly fair.”

I hope that we will see the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle in the Chamber this afternoon and that he will put his concerns forward. I hope he will speak.

The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) has said:

“Every secondary school in Trafford will lose funding, even though it is one of the places famously underfunded for education.”

Perhaps we will hear from him, too. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who of course co-chairs the f40 group of historically underfunded local education authorities, said just this morning:

“The bottom line is that it’s created some distorted outcomes which we think require some significant remodelling.”

No wonder he is concerned, because nearly half of the f40 group face further cuts, rather than increases, under the Minister’s national funding fiddle.

Of course there is one Government Member who seems quite happy to accept the cuts in her own constituency: the Secretary of State herself. Schools in her own constituency are set to lose some 15% of their funding per pupil. Perhaps she will be lobbying herself.