Housing White Paper
Debate between Stuart Andrew and Sajid Javid(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is right to make that point. The change we have made to allow local authorities to increase their planning fees will help with that. Collectively, that 20% increase is worth £75 million. Many local authorities have told me that they would like to hire more resources in their planning departments to help with design, and this change will help to achieve just that.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
Thousands of homes have been built on brownfield in my constituency, but thanks to Labour’s excessive 70,000 housing target, we are now seeing swathes of green belt coming under threat. Does the standardised methodology for housing need offer hope to my constituents that we can have a realistic housing target review to meet housing demand?
Sajid Javid
I assure my hon. Friend that at the heart of the new methodology is a requirement to be more realistic and honest about the actual housing need in the area. Perhaps he will also be reassured by the words in the White Paper about making sure that, before anyone even looks at green belt, they have exhausted all other reasonable options.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stuart Andrew and Sajid Javid(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the consultation is about to close and we will carefully look through its responses, as we always do, but I am sure the right hon. Gentleman agrees with choice, so that local authorities can decide if it is the right thing for them. If, for example, there is a local area with higher unemployment than elsewhere and the local authority thinks the changes will help to create jobs for local working people, that will clearly be a good thing. There was a time when the Labour party was the party of working people; what has happened?
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
T5. Is my hon. Friend aware of the example mentioned last week in the Science and Technology Committee of a £2 million Innovate UK investment leveraging a further £44 million from the private sector? Does he agree this shows the importance of Government supporting science?