Oral Answers to Questions

Grant Shapps Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

9. What plans his Department has in respect of the provision of housing for current and former members of the armed forces.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

I am determined to ensure that those who have served or are serving in the military and armed forces get all the help and assistance possible with purchasing a home, and indeed in the Government’s affordable home programmes.

[David T. C. Davies]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but may I draw his attention to today’s Daily Mail, which highlights the rather shocking disparity in the housing accommodation offered to asylum seekers and to ex-members of the armed forces such as Private Alex Stringer, a triple amputee? Can the Minister assure us that the Government will bring forward schemes to prioritise housing for ex-servicemen and women? I believe that those who have recently fought for their country deserve better accommodation than those who have merely recently arrived here.

[Grant Shapps]

I say to my hon. and, I believe, gallant Friend that I entirely agree that it is essential that people who have been through armed service for this country should expect not just to have the disadvantages removed of having been away, such as perhaps a lost connection with the local area, but to be positively advantaged. I reassure him that that is exactly what our policy is intended to do. I can tell the House that just this weekend the very first recipients under the Government’s new Firstbuy scheme, in which we aim to ensure that service personnel benefit, were Mr and Mrs Ferguson of Telford, who have just moved into a four-bed home. He was a military policeman in the Army.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

10. What assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of selective licensing areas.

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[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

16. How many new homes received planning consent in the second quarter of 2011 in England.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

The latest planning statistics show that in the year to March 2011, local planning authorities granted 37,500 residential planning permissions; that is up 8% on 2009-10.

[Mr Raynsford]

May I draw the House’s attention to my interests?

Will the Minister admit that the figures for the second quarter—the latest available—show that the number of planning consents for residential development were down 23% on last year? That is the second lowest level ever recorded, and less than half the level necessary to provide for housing needs. Will he also now admit that the Government’s maladroit tampering with the planning system has created the near impossible—namely, achieving the lowest level of housing planning permissions at the same time as infuriating the National Trust and other countryside groups by the prospect of indiscriminate growth?

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Gentleman was the architect of many of the policies that led to the lowest level of house building since the 1920s. When we rip up the regional spatial strategies, cancel his top-down targets and put local people in charge, we can see the results, not measured over one little quarter that he plucks out of the air but over the entire first year of this new Government. Those results show that there were just 88,500 house building starts in the last year of his Government, and that the number had risen to 103,500 in the first year of this Government. That is a rise of 17%.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

17. What plans he has to increase the powers of local authorities in dealing with unauthorised development.

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[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

T5. Under the coalition Government, house building statistics in England are 22% higher than those during the comparative period under the last Government. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must never again see circumstances in which council tax bills double yet results are so poor?

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important to allow communities to grow and allow local people to have a stake in that growth, which is why we will ensure—both through the new homes bonus and through reformed business rates—that an ambitious local authority can improve the lot of people who live in their area, who, for the first time, will have a stake in the future.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

In response to the question from the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) said that we were facing a crisis of growth. What does it say about the policies of the present Government that after the abolition of the regional development agencies and six months after the budget for growth, a Minister has come to the House and admitted that there is a crisis of growth?

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

To address housing need, we need to build more than 200,000 properties, but according to the statistics that are coming out, it is unlikely that we will complete half that number in the coming year. The Government have already massively cut support for affordable housing and made a complete botch of the planning system. What will they do to address the coming housing crisis?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman has rightly defined the problem of the legacy that this Government inherited, with the lowest house building since the ’20s, but I am pleased to be able to report that, compared with the comparative period when Labour was in power, since the election, housing building starts are up 22%. I hope he will join me in welcoming those statistics.

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

T8. If the Prime Minister were to give the Secretary of State an additional role, I doubt he would ask for more money to do it, so does he agree that council chief executives who double as returning officers and already earn more than he does should not receive an additional fee for overseeing elections?