Investing in Britain’s Future

Karen Buck Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I can confirm that we are getting on with the Chichester by-pass, one of the Highways Agency schemes that is already worked up. We will be conducting further work across the corridor, including Worthing and Arundel, to invest across the corridor between now and 2020.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The housing investment that the Government have announced must be set against the halving of the affordable housing programme inherited from the previous Government, which led to a halving of social house completions last year. Is it not true that the right hon. Gentleman’s affordable rent model is based on higher rents, that higher rents mean higher housing benefit, and that housing benefit will cost his Government £13 billion more in this spending period than it did under the previous Government, and can he explain how that makes sense?

[Danny Alexander]

I think the hon. Lady was giving a back-handed welcome to the commitment that we made to affordable housing today. On rents, the policy that we have set out of CPI plus 1 for 10 years for uprating of rents saves the Government a growing amount of money in housing benefit payments for the simple reason that tenants rents will increase less fast than previously. That is good news for those individuals, and will save the Government money, as was announced in the costings document yesterday.