Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateChristopher Chope
Main Page: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)Department Debates - View all Christopher Chope's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberI would like to gently correct the assertion that the hon. Lady made about watering down housing targets. The Government are committed to building 300,000 houses across the country. We are building them in the right places, with community support. We understand the importance of social rented housing, and that is why we made a commitment in our levelling-up White Paper to ensure that more are built with the £11.5 billion of Government funding that her Labour-run council is no doubt benefiting from.
This Government are committed to ensuring that we have a fitting memorial to the holocaust, and we will be bringing forward legislation to ensure that we can do just that. That legislation has been designated a hybrid Bill, which, Mr Speaker, you and others will be aware adds an additional layer of complexity to legislating for that memorial. I repeat at this Dispatch Box my commitment on behalf of this Government: we will do everything possible to legislate, consonant with our responsibilities to this House and to the other place, with the maximum level of speed and with unwavering commitment, because we know that, as the voices of those directly affected by the holocaust fade, we must do everything we can to ensure that there is a fitting memorial to this country’s role and place in supporting them.
Why is my right hon. Friend refusing to let Members of this House see the original and revised impact assessments of his neo-socialist Renters (Reform) Bill? The independent Regulatory Policy Committee rejected the first impact assessment as not fit for purpose. Will he ensure that we see that and the second version before we debate the Bill on Second Reading?
I am hugely in favour of publishing impact assessments, but I reassure the House that the proposal that my hon. Friend mentions as neo-socialist was in the manifesto under which we secured a record-breaking majority in 2019, and the key provisions of it were backed not just by my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) but by other noted neo-socialists, including my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss).