Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grant Shapps and Tony Baldry
Grant Shapps
As the hon. Lady will know, I bring together eight Departments in a working group on homelessness and its causes. Our next report is very likely to be on the precise issue of the women who make up a subsection of people who are homeless. It is worth bearing in mind that one of the first things the Government did was to change the disgraceful rules that prevented the number of homeless people from being properly registered under the previous system. It is also worth knowing that the level of homelessness is less than half the average under the previous Administration.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
T7. Will my right hon. Friend consider working with Cherwell district council, myself and others to make Bicester a garden city?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grant Shapps and Tony Baldry
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to be concerned about the conditions that people live in, and I share that concern very strongly. It is interesting that Labour never introduced a compulsory register in 13 years. It is also interesting that when I came into office and asked to see the sum of work that had been done by my predecessors, the answer was none. There are good reasons why private registers would not work. There are 1.5 million landlords, many of whom are, for example, private individuals letting out one or two rooms. It would be an unworkable system requiring an enormous quango. The answer is to use the existing legislation properly. I will help to advise the hon. Lady’s local authority on precisely how to do that if that is helpful.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
T4. Since the reign of Mary Tudor and throughout the vicissitudes of history, Banbury council has started all its meetings with prayer and a recitation of the 84th Psalm. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the general power of competence he has granted local councils will enable those that wish to continue to start their meetings with prayer to do so?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grant Shapps and Tony Baldry(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Grant Shapps
First, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said that there would be 40,000 repossessions last year, but there were fewer than that; they came in at 36,000 or 37,000. I should have thought that that would be welcomed, even by Opposition Members. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is tempted to go back to old letters, but that letter has already been proved wrong in several different ways, including the fact that its main concern was the number of affordable homes that would be built. We now know that rather than 150,000, 170,000 will be built. I should have thought that he welcomed those moves rather than going back to old letters that have already been discredited.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
T3. Will my right hon. Friend instruct the Planning Inspectorate that in considering whether a local authority has made adequate provision for housing over a five-year period it should take into account all the extant granted permissions for housing that a local authority has given, irrespective of whether construction work on such housing has started?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grant Shapps and Tony Baldry
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
14. What steps his Department is taking to support home ownership.
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
This Government are, of course, committed, first, to ensuring that interest rates remain low for as long as possible, so we have been tackling the deficit to help first-time buyers. In addition, we are helping 10,500 first-time buyers through our FirstBuy scheme and 100,000 new right-to-buy tenants currently in council houses will own their own homes.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware of the gap between deposit aspiration and deposit actuation for first-time buyers in Banbury and Bicester. Will he update the House on how the FirstBuy scheme will support young first-time buyer families in my constituency?
Grant Shapps
People are having to save such large deposits for their homes and we are keen to do something about that, so the FirstBuy scheme ensures that they need to save only 10% rather than the current average of 20%. I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that 169 homes are available in his constituency under the scheme.