Business of the House

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

As my hon. Friend will have discovered, other Members in the House think that their own county deserves generous support on funding tourism. Yorkshire was the county that received more cash than any other area of the country, and it is having to go through the same process as everyone else in adjusting to the new regime. It has an advantage, in that Yorkshire received £10 million of regional development agency funding for the financial year 2011-12, because of a three-year agreement between Welcome to Yorkshire and Yorkshire Forward, which other regions did not get. I can say to him only that there may be other sources of funding—the regional growth fund, the European regional development fund and the rural development programme for England—to which he may turn for assistance.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I would like to return to the issue of the housing statement and the Homes and Communities Agency figures. They show that in London the number of social rented homes started between April and September this year was just 56, which is 7,469 down on the figure for the previous six months. If the Government knew that the figures were going to be released on Tuesday, why was the statement not made on the same day?

[Sir George Young]

The statement was made in its own right, independent of the statistics to which the hon. Lady refers, and I do not think that she should link them in the way that she has. I hope that she will welcome what was said on Monday, which was aimed at kick-starting the housing market and doing better than the outgoing Labour Government on housing starts and housing completions.