Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

The situation differs slightly in different parts of the UK. There is Government funding for projects in England that look after people who have indeterminate national status. I honestly do not know whether the situation in Scotland is a UK matter or a Scottish matter. I will have to write to the hon. Lady on that issue.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

10. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of central Government funding for affordable housing since 2010.

[The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)]

Over the past seven years, the Government have delivered 357,000 affordable homes, more than in the last seven years of the previous Government. Last year, the number of affordable homes delivered was up by 27%.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The new Secretary of State skirted the opportunity to address questions on social rented housing posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), so I will try again. In London in particular, for those on average incomes and below, affordable housing means only social rented housing—housing in which this Government are now investing virtually nothing for the first time since records began—so will the Secretary of State work with the Treasury to ensure that the Government go back to investing in social rented housing so that councils and housing associations provide truly affordable, good-quality homes and, by the way, cut the housing benefit bill that is currently going to rip-off private landlords?

[Dominic Raab]

I gently remind the hon. Lady that more than 10,000 local authority homes have been built since 2010, which is three times more than were built under the last Labour Government. We are investing a further £9 billion in affordable homes up to 2021; we have raised the borrowing caps on councils by £1 billion; and we are giving local authorities greater rental certainty from 2020.