Business of the House Debate

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Department: Leader of the House

Business of the House

Lord Watts Excerpts
Thursday 7th February 2013

(11 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lord Lansley Portrait Mr Lansley
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My hon. Friend is right to highlight that, and I am sure the Pennine Sailing Club and the Valley Bowmen of Huddersfield archery club are very deserving recipients of lottery funding support. Some 400,000 groups and organisations across the country have now benefited from lottery funding since the lottery was established in 1994. There are some very good mechanisms for organisations to access lottery funding, including the funding search tool at lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/funding.

Lord Watts Portrait Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
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At yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions it was clear that the Prime Minister had no idea about the implications of his bedroom tax. May we have an urgent debate on that, so the Prime Minister can get up to speed?

Lord Lansley Portrait Mr Lansley
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On the contrary, the Prime Minister absolutely understood that housing benefit has risen dramatically and that it is essential to control it. He was absolutely clear, too, that under the last Labour Government the kind of rules that were applied to social housing had been applied to private rented accommodation, and that raises the question of why there should be a difference. He was also very clear that, as resources are finite in the current circumstances, we should ask why we are funding almost 1 million unused bedrooms in the social housing sector when there are 1.8 million people on the social housing waiting list.