Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

The last Government passed the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act, supported by the then Opposition. Labour said in the King’s Speech that it would go further with reform and quickly. Then, the Minister said that would take the whole of this Parliament. Now, the secondary legislation needed, as well as the consultation pending, mean that leaseholders are unlikely to see any reform quickly. Last week, the Government said that primary legislation may now be needed without implementing the law already passed. Is that not just another example of the Government promising one thing but now flailing around, delaying and breaking key promises they made, while leaseholders across the country suffer?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

The Deputy Prime Minister has repeatedly stuck to her commitment that 1.5 million homes, including social homes, will be built over the lifetime of this Parliament despite everybody knowing that she will not achieve it. And today, the latest people to say she will not are Savills, who have forecast that the true number she will build over this Parliament is just 840,000, and that means fewer social homes too. Now that she has emerged from the dark rooms of the Treasury to capitulate to the Chancellor, will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that more social homes and 1.5 million new homes will be built by the end of this Parliament: yes or no?

[Angela Rayner]

The Opposition cannot have it both ways: one way they are saying we are failing to build the homes; and the other way they are saying we are concreting over the green belt. We said that planning reforms alone will not deliver our ambitions, which is why we have committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation. And I say to the hon. Member, as I have said to many people in my life, underestimate me at your peril.