Oral Answers to Questions

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have changed the law to ask landlords to provide tenants with at least six months’ notice before eviction. We are not going to have evictions in lockdown areas, there will not be any enforcement of evictions over Christmas and we are putting £180 million into discretionary payments for local authorities to help hardship cases. We are also embarking on a huge programme to build hundreds of thousands more homes, particularly affordable homes, which I hope the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will want to buy and to part-buy.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

The A47 Acle Straight is the main road—in fact the only road—that links Great Yarmouth to the great city of Norwich. It is a bottleneck and it is notoriously dangerous, and there has been a campaign to dual it for at least 30 years, yet the highways authority has just announced that it has no plans even to consider it for upgrade until 2030 at the earliest. What can my right hon. Friend do to give hope to the people of Broadland, and of Norfolk more widely, that this inexplicable decision will be reconsidered?

[The Prime Minister]

I appreciate the temporary disappointment that my hon. Friend is experiencing, but this Government are immensely ambitious for the improvement of our transport infrastructure, and active consideration is now being undertaken of that project again. I understand that parliamentary colleagues are meeting Baroness Vere, the roads Minister, this week to discuss the options for additional schemes from 2025 onwards.