Jack Dromey
Main Page: Jack Dromey (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)
Mr Foster
I am delighted to congratulate people in Kettering and the neighbouring area on that. I hope that the new homes bonus is providing an additional incentive, and we have of course recently brought on stream the £10 billion loan guarantee scheme, which will help to provide funding for further such homes.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The all-party Treasury Select Committee, the Governor of the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all expressed concern that the Government’s policies will not build the homes our country needs. With the comprehensive spending review but three weeks away, the shadow Chancellor persuasively argued this morning that the Government should reject the economic illiteracy of austerity, which is pushing up the costs of failure through additional borrowing and soaring housing benefit bills. Does the Housing Minister agree that the time has come to invest in badly needed social and affordable homes to rent or buy, creating jobs and apprenticeships, bringing down the costs of failure and getting our economy moving?
Mr Foster
I think that the whole House will have been somewhat amused by the cheek of the hon. Gentleman, given that under his party’s Administration we saw a reduction of 421,000 in the number of affordable homes. This Government have introduced measures to reverse that trend, and we hope to announce further measures in the near future.