Local Government Financing
Debate between Grant Shapps and Andrea Leadsom
Grant Shapps
The right hon. Lady will share the concern that I had at turning up at a Ministry and being told that the £1.5 billion that had been presented to the Building Britain’s Future fund exactly a year ago, in July 2009 when programmes such as Kickstart were announced, just did not exist. We are now having to do what we can to support those important programmes. She can expect to hear further announcements on this front.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
If all the programmes that the Opposition are concerned that we will cut were so valuable, why were so few houses built under the last Administration? Why are there 1 million people not in education, employment or training—NEETs—in this country if the programmes were working so well?
Grant Shapps
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, not least because of what happened in the debate on housing here just last week. The Opposition claim to be passionately interested in housing, but there was nobody at all on the Opposition Benches then: not a single Opposition Member turned up for a debate on a subject that they claim to care about so passionately.
Perhaps the answer lies in the figures on housing. We have only to look at the figures for house building last year, for example: fewer homes were built than during any peacetime period since 1924. It is not as if the top-down approach was working; the more the previous Government tried to centralise, dictate and impose housing on local communities, the fewer homes were built. That is why we intend to turn their policy on its head and ensure that in future incentives drive house performance and house building in this country.