Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Mike Gapes

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I have the greatest possible respect for the right hon. Gentleman, who was a diligent Housing Minister, but he will understand the difference between allowing developers to build blocks of flats on gardens and allowing property owners to extend their property because their children are getting older or because their old mum has come to live with them. It is a classic position of his party that it completely fails to understand —and, indeed, sneers at—the aspirations of normal people who just want to put a little bit extra on their house.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister have a word with the Secretary of State and ask him to get on a train that will take him from his constituency through Shenfield to Ilford, so that he can see how the Tory-Liberal council in Redbridge is not enforcing the existing legislation preventing people from having unauthorised development in their back gardens?

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman has done a fantastic job of drawing that matter to the attention of the House and of the nation, and I am sure that he will be able to put pressure on his local authority to follow the law.