House Building 2021-01-11
2021-01-11
TAGS
Response quality
Questions & Answers
Q1
Direct Answer
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Context
The MP is inquiring about the government's efforts to increase house construction.
What steps his Department is taking to promote house building. The Government has a responsibility to ensure more homes are built for various needs, including affordable housing and addressing specific community requirements.
The Government care deeply about building more homes and delivered more than 243,000 last year, the highest level for more than 30 years. We have gone to great lengths to keep the whole industry open during the pandemic, sustaining hundreds of thousands of people's jobs and livelihoods, while continuing to stimulate the market through our stamp duty cut. Covid will impact starts significantly, so we are taking steps to sustain activity, including delivering up to 180,000 homes through our £12 billion investment in affordable homes, the biggest investment of its kind for a decade.
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Assessment & feedback
Response accuracy
Q2
Direct Answer
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Context
The MP is concerned about the lack of social housing construction in his constituency's small rural villages over the past four decades, impacting young couples and their ability to buy homes.
There are about 100 small rural villages in my Gainsborough constituency, and I doubt there has been any building of social housing in any of them over the past 40 years. It is virtually impossible for young couples, who often do precisely the jobs we want in rural areas, to buy into villages. Will the Secretary of State do a massive campaign like the Macmillan campaign at the beginning of the 1950s to build social housing and rent to buy in our rural villages in England?
Like my right hon. Friend, I want to see more homes of all kinds built in all parts of the country, and I want to deliver as many social and affordable homes as we possibly can. I was delighted that the Chancellor gave us the funding for the £12 billion affordable homes programme, which as I say is the largest for a decade. It has a target to deliver 10% of those homes in rural areas, so it should support his community in Lincolnshire.
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Assessment & feedback
Response accuracy
Q3
Partial Answer
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Context
The MP welcomes recent announcements on improving conditions for leaseholders and preventing overly tall buildings from blighting local neighborhoods.
My constituents particularly welcome my right hon. Friend's recent announcements in respect of improving the circumstances of leaseholders and ensuring that overly tall buildings are not permitted to blight local neighbourhoods. When can we expect to see the benefit of those measures being implemented?
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he has done in this area, along with a number of his colleagues representing London constituencies. I have corresponded with the Mayor of London, directing him that in the forthcoming London plan there now be a tall buildings policy for London, which will ensure that every borough can determine if and where tall buildings should be built.
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Assessment & feedback
The answer does not provide a timeline or specific implementation details.
Response accuracy
Q4
Partial Answer
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Context
The MP criticises the government for failing to increase house construction and for pushing up property prices, making it difficult for first-time buyers.
Hard-working young people saving up for their own home have been let down by successive Tory Governments, and this Government are missing their own target of increasing to 300,000 the number of homes built per year by the mid-2020s. The stamp duty holiday pushed prices out of reach of first-time buyers, and the first homes scheme built literally no homes. So what does the Secretary of State say to the young people whose dream of home ownership he has so badly let down?
Let us remember that the last Labour Government left house building in this country at its lowest ever level in peacetime—the lowest since the 1920s. The statistics that we published at the end of last year show that this Government are building more homes than any Government has built for almost 40 years, and were it not for covid, we would have built more homes than any Government since that in which Harold Macmillan was Housing Secretary many years ago.
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Assessment & feedback
The answer deflects by discussing past Labour government performance instead of addressing current target failures.
Discussing Past Performance
Response accuracy