Business of the House

Greg Mulholland Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that question. Of the 40 days in the Chamber that were allocated to the Backbench Business Committee in the Session that has just ended, 17 were not on Thursdays. It is therefore not the case that they are all Thursdays. None the less, I take to heart her plea for more non-Thursdays. There may be a non-Thursday before the recess. I take her point on board and, as always, we will seek to accommodate the hon. Lady and her Committee as much as we can.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

May we have a debate on extending the excellent provisions for councils to borrow to build social housing? Headingley in my constituency is now achieving a better balance between family houses and houses in multiple occupation. However, we want councils to be able to buy properties so that the mix can be extended and the balance improved further.

[Sir George Young]

I understand my hon. Friend’s keen interest in improving the quality and quantity of the social housing stock in his constituency. I welcome what he said about the freedoms that we have given local authorities recently. I will raise the point with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Apart from local authorities, there is the additional resource of housing associations, which already have the freedom, to which my hon. Friend referred, to buy houses on the open market if they want to. Because they can borrow and top up their allocation with private funds, routing money through housing associations often enables public money to go further than if it was routed through local authorities.