Greg Mulholland
Main Page: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I thank her and her colleagues for the time that they put in over the summer to talk to their local housing associations about the deal that the associations were working towards putting to us. It is important that people recognise that the rural exemptions will continue. We are extending right to buy and the rural exemptions are in right to buy. She will also be able to look at the portable option that the housing associations are putting forward.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
The Conservatives cannot seriously believe that the way to deal with the housing crisis is to give developers carte blanche to build unaffordable housing, including on green-belt sites, while attacking social housing. This is not a policy of aspiration for the millions on social housing waiting lists, for those living in overcrowded accommodation or for those with no home at all. Will the Minister tell us why there is this discrimination between those who are in social housing and those in the private rented sector? Many in the latter category are desperate to get into affordable social housing. What will he do to prevent the homes that are sold from being put into the private rented sector, as has happened to 40% of previous right-to-buy homes?
Brandon Lewis
First, 86% of the people in our country want the chance to own their home, and we make no apology for supporting them. On right to buy, we are talking about the housing associations building more homes. As we have already heard, a number of them—including some of the largest, such as Sanctuary, Orbit and L&Q—see this as a way of ensuring that their asset base can be used to deliver the extra homes that we need, to ensure that housing supply goes up. For those people in the private rented sector, I absolutely want to continue to do everything possible to support their aspiration to own. That is what Help to Buy is about, and it is what the 200,000 starter homes announced by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week are about. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support us in our programme of work.