Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hammond]

As I have said many times in this House, we have two choices: we can either run away from this challenge; or we can run towards it and embrace it. In fact, if we want to maintain the living standards of our people and the status of our economy in the future, we have no choice but to embrace it—and we are doing so. I announced at the autumn Budget funding to support the uptake of digital technologies across Government, allowing the Government to be an exemplar, but we are also promoting these technologies to private business. The UK is at the forefront of many of these cutting-edge technologies.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

T8. The housing crisis has gone on for far too long under this Government. Lewisham’s Labour council is about to build its 500th new council home since 2015, but many people still come to my surgeries because they reside in temporary accommodation. Will the Chancellor now commit to reversing the 63% cut in funding to the council’s budget so that Lewisham can get on with building more homes?

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Elizabeth Truss)]

First, we have committed to building 300,000 homes per year over the next decade, which is vitally important to address the issue. Also, when we came into government, 80% of local government funding was being provided centrally, but we have now enabled local councils to raise that money. That is the right thing to do—people vote locally and councils should be accountable locally.