Wes Streeting
Main Page: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)Department Debates - View all Wes Streeting's debates with the HM Treasury
(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
This is an area where I agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is why, in addition to the fund I mentioned a moment ago, the Prime Minister also confirmed £12.2 billion of funding for affordable homes, and there is the £400 million brownfield land fund to get schemes working immediately with Mayors for exactly the reason he sets out.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The Conservative manifesto promised £9 billion for energy efficiency schemes, but the Committee on Climate Change described even that as
“welcome but not enough to match the size of the challenge”.
Given that the Chancellor is about to announce a £2 billion scheme, why are the Government scaling back their ambition when they should be scaling up to bring down people’s bills, tackle climate change and create the jobs we need to get Britain back to work?
Steve Barclay
If the hon. Gentleman had listened to the answer I gave a moment ago, he would have seen that we are learning from the lessons of the 2008 crash. One of the measures that was put in place then saw a fall of a third in the number of small house builders, so part of the £450 million fund is providing the finance to enable small house builders to build the schemes that Members on both sides of the House agree on. It is about learning the lessons of the schemes that Labour put in place in 2008, which led to a fall in construction work.