Gareth Bacon MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Feb 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source

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  The president of the Law Society has described the proposals as “an extreme measure that goes too far”. The chair of the Criminal Bar Association has described them as “a wrecking ball to a system that is fundamentally sound and has been in place for generations”. He pointed out that the juries are not the cause of the backlogs. The Government’s own Back-Bench MPs have described the proposals as a “dereliction of duty”, “a ludicrous proposal that will not work”, and “a fundamental change to how our criminal justice system operates”, which “goes too far” and the consequence of which would be “to destroy justice as we know it.” Why do the Government think that they are all wrong?

• 5 Feb 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source

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  4. What advice she has given the Government on the potential impact of removing jury trials on the rule of law.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Education on methanol poisoning · Hansard source

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  On 21 November 2024, Simone White lost her life, aged just 28, following a mass methanol poisoning incident. She was one of six tourists who died after consuming contaminated drinks served at a hostel in the tourist town of Vang Vieng in Laos. Alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) and the hon. Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson), I have met members of Simone’s family who live in our respective constituencies. The incident has prompted them to campaign for increased awareness and education about the dangers of methanol poisoning abroad. The petition states: The petition of residents of the constituency of Orpington, Declares that bootleg alcohol poses a considerable danger to tourists and has, tragically, resulted in deaths in countries including Laos, Turkey and Vietnam. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to ensure that children and young people are taught about the dangers of consuming bootleg alcohol as part of the PSHE or biology curriculum in schools. And the petitioners remain, etc. [P003160]

• 27 Jan 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his remarks and for advance sight of his statement. Progress on leasehold reform is to be welcomed. Labour promised that when it stood for election 18 months ago, so it is about time it got on with it, as the previous Conservative Government had started to do. The previous Conservative Government began the process of fundamental reforms to the existing system of leaseholds by making it easier to extend a lease or to buy a freehold, increasing the standard lease extension time to 990 years, and giving leaseholders greater transparency over their service charges. His Majesty’s Opposition remain committed to giving leaseholders a fair deal, want householders to have security for the future and will continue to hold the Government to account on that. The Government made big promises to leaseholders at the last election. Do they believe that the Bill is the summit of their ambitions? What about the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024? What are their plans to implement secondary legislation? There are opportunities to improve leaseholder situations that are available to the Government now. Why have they not implemented those changes? Surely, if they were serious about reform for leaseholders, they would have picked up the 2024 Act and run with it, rather than doing nothing until now. The Minister just said: “I have made clear to the House on previous occasions, the last Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act contains a number of specific but serious flaws that prevent certain provisions from operating as intended and that need to be rectified via primary legislation.” He went on to say: “While not included in the draft Bill, our intention is to rectify those flaws in primary legislation.” Perhaps he could tell us what those flaws are. If the Government have already identified them, why are the corrections not included in the forthcoming Bill? Surely now would be the time to rectify them. So if not now, when? I would be remiss not to comment on one of the central principles of housing reform: there actually needs to be some housing in order to reform it. The Labour Mayor of London is delivering the lowest house building in London since 2009, while Labour’s national housing delivery is nowhere near where it needs to be to meet its 1.5 million homes target. What is Labour doing to ensure that there are strong incentives to build more? Where is the second planning Bill that the Government briefed out to the media that they will need to introduce because of their failure to get the planning reform right first time? The Conservative party is pro-development, which is why we have announced both a plan to review the London plan to improve on Labour’s failings in London and to ensure that national development is done on a brownfield-first approach. Now, it is true that ground rent is an additional cost to leaseholders, but it is reported that the Chancellor is against capping ground rents because she believes it will deter pension fund investors. What does the Minister have to say to that? The Government are claiming that these measures will reduce people’s bills, which would of course be welcome, but if leaseholder ground rent bills are simply replaced by soaring council tax bills, with some local councils now facing more than 30% rises in council tax due the Government’s grossly unfair funding review, how will people be better off? In inner London, which has a high proportion of leasehold flats, residents in councils such as Wandsworth, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea are facing the double whammy of staggering rises in council tax and a council tax surcharge on top. Are the Government in fact claiming to cut a cost on one hand, while knowingly replacing it with even more costs on the other? I would be grateful if the Minister answered those points in his reply. We will scrutinise the Government’s forthcoming commonhold and leasehold reform Bill, and we will hold the Government to account on their promises on leasehold reform and housing. We look forward to studying the details, and to the debates that will follow.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums · Hansard source

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  Three local elections were delayed by one year in 2021, all of which were the result of local government reorganisations; a consultation took place with the authorities affected in advance and their views were taken on board. That is in complete contrast with what the Labour Government are doing right now. They are riding roughshod over the views of local people and cancelling elections for the second year running. It is vital that communities get the real empowerment they deserve, that taxpayers get the accountability they pay for and that new structures face proper scrutiny. That is why, on Report and Third Reading of the devolution Bill, the Opposition urged the Government to look again and accept amendments to ensure that the Bill provided those key tenets; true to form, the Government ignored those entreaties. The Opposition will continue to vote against the Government in Parliament on their botched handling of this issue. If the Government do not listen to local people, through whatever democratic means, we face a future for local government in which power is stripped from genuinely local authorities and people—parishes, town councils, neighbourhood groups and civic institutions—and centralised within geographically and demographically distant authorities instead. While the Government’s track record speaks for itself with rushed, top-down reorganisations of local government and higher council tax burdens on residents, the Conservatives believe that communities deserve a voice—not another expensive restructure that sidelines local priorities, moves decision making further away from voters and inflates the cost for taxpayers. While referenda, like elections, could be ignored by a Government who appear indifferent to the views of voters, the Opposition believe in local voices and will continue to stand up for our local democratic institutions. Our electoral process should not be abused or bent to the will of a particular party for its own partisan benefit. Ministers should treat voters with respect instead of disdain, stop undermining our democratic system and let the people of this country make their own decisions.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation: Referendums · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) for securing this important debate and congratulate him on the excellent points he made in his speech. Local government holds a special place in our multilayered and multifaceted democracy. It is democratically accountable, inherently bottom-up and strongly community-minded. The average local authority delivers more than 800 different services, providing key day-to-day functions that represent, for most people, the most noticeable interactions with political choices and democratic management. Whether it is bins, potholes, recycling and waste, libraries, adult social care or SEND services, the most obvious impact of many people’s choices at the ballot box are those delivered at the local level in their parish, district or county council. I am especially aware of that having served as a local councillor in the London borough of Bexley for 23 years and, on a regional level, as a London Assembly member for 13 years. It was a privilege to serve my constituents in those positions, just as it is as a Member of Parliament. That is why I know that local government deserves support and respect. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that the Labour Government do not share that view. Along with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), I noted that the hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) said that local government reorganisation is complex, consequential and long-lasting. He is completely correct on that. However, my right hon. Friend was also completely correct to say that there was nothing in the Labour party manifesto that suggested a top-down, nationwide structural reorganisation of all local councils. There was no mention of riding roughshod over the wishes of local people and local government, but that is exactly the course the Government are pursuing. We have heard today from right hon. and hon. Members how the Government’s plans, which stretch far beyond the platform that they stood for at the election, will impact their local area and constituents. The Government’s programme of so-called devolution is already having sweeping impacts on councils and local people—not least, as we have seen for the second time in as many years, with the likelihood of the cancellation of local elections across vast swathes of the country. It is telling that of the 63 councils offered the chance to postpone elections by the Government, nearly three quarters of those doing so are Labour run or have a Labour majority. Following on from the Liberal Democrats spokesman, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), there are a further four local authorities where the Liberal Democrats have at least a share of power, and one where they are in outright control. It is widely believed that Labour is denying democracy and running scared of voters by cancelling elections where it feels it will get a pasting. Independent voices—from academia to politics and the Electoral Commission—are urging that the elections should go ahead. Just recently, the Government told us they would. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, told the House on Monday: “Just before Christmas, the Minister highlighted that councils were asked to delay elections, after the Secretary of State had repeatedly told our Committee that they would be going ahead…I am concerned that we are seeing a postponement yet again.” —[ Official Report , 19 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 58-59.] Her argument was supported by the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer), who said: “As a former leader of a major council and a Labour MP, I find this completely embarrassing. A Labour Government should not be taking the vote away from 3.7 million people. It is completely unprecedented for a Labour Government to do that. There is clearly a vested interest for some councillors who may feel, looking at the opinion polls, that they will lose their seat.” —[ Official Report , 19 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 60.] He is surely correct in his assertion that this is what lies behind the Government’s actions. When 3.7 million people are being denied the right to vote and the Government’s excuse is their own radically top-down and botched reorganisation of local government, it is no wonder that local people feel so ignored and insulted, as hon. Members have made clear today. Let me make it clear again: the Conservative party’s position is that the elections should go ahead. Our line has been completely clear and consistent. This mass suppression of democracy is, perhaps, the most egregious of the many negative outcomes of the Government’s bungled restructuring programme, although it is far from the only one. The greatest scandal comes in the Government’s approach to local councils as they seek to carry out this unmandated position. It is vital that local councils—the elected representatives of local people—and the communities in which they live are heard throughout any process affecting the make-up, functions and form of their local democratic institutions. Instead, Labour’s approach has been to dictate from Whitehall, forcing councils to sign up to a prescribed model of restructuring, imposed from the centre and leaving local people without a voice. We believe that true devolution requires clarity, accountability and sustainability in funding, elections and structure, but the Government have offered none of those things. While local referenda are expensive and non-binding, they provide another collective voice that could feed into the debate about how people want to be represented. The voices of local people should be front and centre of any restructuring process, but sadly, given their current approach, even if there were local referenda, it appears likely that this Government would simply ignore any view that did not correspond with their own.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  A year ago the Secretary of State dropped the statutory free speech complaints scheme from the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. According to a letter published in The Sunday Times from 370 academics, including three Nobel prize winners, this has totally negated the whole point of the Act, thus imperilling freedom of speech on university campuses. When is the Secretary of State going to do something to correct this mistake?

• 15 Jan 2026 · New Towns · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, and to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) for bringing it forward. I have been rehearsing the name of her constituency in my head for quite some time, and I have made a mess of pronouncing it right from the outset, so I apologise to her. I also thank the 16 hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. It seems that every time I return to this place, the Government have fallen further and further away from justifying their increasingly mistaken belief that they can deliver on their 1.5 million homes target. No one believes they are going to reach such a lofty, albeit much- needed, figure. We have pointed out that the Government’s efforts to reach that unrealistic target appear geared towards removing as much local input into decision making as possible, and towards shifting development from brownfield sites in cities and urban areas, where demand and infrastructure exists, to rural areas, where demand is often lower and infrastructure is far less well provided or even non-existent. That brings me to the Government’s new towns policy, about which, as it is currently framed, we have significant concerns, which I will touch on shortly. At the Labour party conference at the end of September last year, the Secretary of State pledged that the Government would go ahead with work on new towns in at least 12 locations. Since then, it has emerged that only three of those new towns will begin before the end of this Parliament, with the rest to be built after 2029. The three new towns that we will supposedly see begun before 2029 are Tempsford in Bedfordshire, Leeds South Bank, and Crews Hill and Chase Park in the London borough of Enfield. While His Majesty’s Opposition recognise the need to build new homes, we hope that the Government will work harder to listen to and address the concerns of local people living near these three sites than they have done with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), whose constituency includes one of the other nine lower-priority new town sites. He highlighted some of the Opposition’s key concerns when he presented a petition to the House on 17 December last year about plans for the Adlington new town, and he did so again in his excellent speech earlier today. The concerns he outlined were about the adverse impact on the green belt and on agricultural land, strains on local infrastructure and services, and the adverse impact on local communities. We are sympathetic to those concerns, which are not restricted to Adlington. One of the first new towns earmarked for building is in the London borough of Enfield, which has 37.3% green belt and 47.6% open space. According to the CPRE, the green space of Enfield, much of which is based on the borders of the Enfield Chase heritage area of special character, gives large parts of Enfield a rural character that is comparable to Richmond park or Hampstead heath, which are areas of significant local and historical value. The site of the proposed new town currently comprises commercial horticultural nurseries, garden centres, a golf course, working farms and greenfield land. The local businesses employ around 1,000 people, and all of this is threatened by the proposal. These are not vast swathes of undeveloped potential, but important green spaces that help as much as urban centres to define an area’s character and community. Tempsford in Bedfordshire is much the same, and has been chosen as an area for a whole new stand-alone town. My hon. Friend the Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) highlighted, on behalf of his constituents, some of his concerns as the local Member of Parliament. It is vital that the Government work to fully and properly consult a local community like Tempsford—an area currently made up of small villages—rather than continue their top-down crusade against the countryside. That is why we Conservatives have repeatedly sought assurances from the Government about their plans for full and proper consultation with local people and communities. I hope the Minister will commit to that today. The impact of new towns does not stop at the boundaries of the local authority area in which they are developed. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) has highlighted that the proposed Crews Hill development in the London borough of Enfield will be closer to the village of Goffs Oak in his constituency than to Enfield town hall. The imposition of a new town of 21,000 properties on the border of his constituency cannot avoid having a direct impact on his constituents. Will the Minister therefore commit to proper consultation of communities and councils adjacent to the local authority in which the proposed new town may be built? He is a decent man, and I hope that he will. The Opposition recognise that the country is in desperate need of not just more housing, but more housing in the right places with the right infrastructure to support it. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) made precisely that point in her speech. Identifying where places have the right infrastructure, brownfield or urban capacity, and where new homes are most wanted, is a key factor. The Government must get serious about their failure to improve house building during their first 18 months in power. They must stop making excuses and blaming everybody else, and instead look at how to get the country building in the right places. That is why the Opposition have called for a brownfield-first approach to be properly actioned, not just paid lip service to, as it is by the Government. According to the CPRE, in a large number of local authorities there is enough brownfield land with planning permission to meet the targets set by the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need for at least the next five years. The same report shows that England’s brownfield sites increased in number, land area and minimum net dwellings by up to 54%, 6% and 34%, respectively, between 2018 and 2024. The Government will no doubt point to their brownfield passport policy in response to that criticism, but it should be noted that this policy, if actioned, is not without risk. It could result in bypassing crucial local input, minimising local community power in their own local neighbourhoods and rushing through developments despite legitimate local objections, which will do nothing for people’s faith in democracy. Even if that proves to be a misplaced concern, brownfield passports do not deal with some of the deep-seated causes of brownfield delays. After all, we know that there are already hundreds of thousands of planning permissions on sites that have not yet been built, and it is a lazy generalisation and an inadequate explanation simply to blame all of that on the land banking of greedy developers, because the causes are more complex. Funding, complexity, increasing regulatory burdens, delays and other factors all play their part. If the Government do nothing to address those factors, all they will succeed in is achieving more undeveloped planning permissions. As we all know, people need real buildings to live in, not unexecuted planning permissions.

• 15 Jan 2026 · New Towns · Hansard source

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  I agree. It would be a great tragedy if the Government push on with their new towns policy and simply think that their brownfield passport will solve everything, because by having fewer developments on brownfield sites and some developments on greenfield sites, we will end up losing the precious green belt and still not delivering the amount of housing we need. That would be an own goal from the Government, so I hope they will take this point away and do something about it. The Government need to look further and faster at the proper development of brownfield land, rather than ripping up the green belt and steamrolling over local democracy, local voices and local communities. Recent history shows that this approach works. If the Government want to see urban regeneration or densification done right, they can follow Conservative examples and pursue brownfield first, not greenfield first, as the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), highlighted at the Conservative party conference. The Government need look no further than the Olympic Park in east London—a brownfield site transformed into a superbly connected hub of housing, business, retail and leisure that was completed under Boris Johnson as the Conservative Mayor of London. It was the same with Canary Wharf under Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, when the old, dilapidated docks were completely regenerated, revitalised and reborn. Finally, as the Opposition mentioned in the final stages of the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, the Government should add to their growing pile of U-turns and reverse the damaging blows the Chancellor and the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), dealt to the housing market and the construction market through their unholy trinity of economic decline, tax hikes and cuts to demand-side housing policies. Only through a genuine brownfield-first approach and a reversal of the damage inflicted by No. 11 and the former Secretary of State will the Government succeed in protecting our countryside and get on to building real homes properly connected with the right facilities that people actually want.

• 15 Jan 2026 · New Towns · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is correct that I am familiar with the site in her constituency that is proposed as one of the new towns. I acknowledge, accept and support her argument that the DLR infrastructure would stimulate the regeneration of Thamesmead. Is it therefore a cause of regret that that site is not included in the three new towns that are scheduled to begin work before 2029?

• 12 Jan 2026 · House Building: London · Hansard source

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  At the outset of the Secretary of State’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), one could be forgiven for thinking that we had an entirely new Mayor of London. In fact, this year we celebrate, or perhaps more appropriately commiserate, a decade of Sadiq Khan’s tenure as London Mayor. In that decade, in the most prosperous city in Europe, Sadiq Khan has overseen not just stalling but consistently falling rates of private construction starts. Recent figures from Molior show that London began building just 3,248 new homes in the first nine months of 2025, leaving it on track to start building fewer than 5,000 in total in 2025. Incredibly, the Government’s response has been to cut their floundering mayor’s housing targets by 11%, but skyrocket targets in outer London authorities, where the vast majority of greenbelt land is. That includes an increase of almost 400% compared with previously approved London planning targets in my local council area of Bromley. Will the Secretary of State please explain why people living in places such as Bromley and our local greenbelt must pay the price for Sadiq Khan’s decade of failure and uselessness?

• 12 Jan 2026 · House Building: London · Hansard source

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  What the Secretary of State did not say is that local boroughs are not in charge of building out planning consents, and he did not acknowledge that London boroughs are subject to the London plan. The Secretary of State claims that he is working with the Mayor of London, who writes the London plan, to build more homes, but unlike the Secretary of State, the facts do not heed the mayor’s spin. According to Molior, there were just 3,950 new homes sold in London during the first half of 2025 and just 3,248 private housing starts in the first nine months of 2025, against a nine month target of 66,000. The Secretary of State said last year that his own job should be on the line if he fails to meet his housing targets, so why does he not practise what he preaches, do Londoners a favour and tell sorry Sadiq to pack his bags over his decade of failure?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Quarries: Planning Policy · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, and to take part in this debate about planning policy for quarries. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for securing the debate. I appreciate that many hon. Members on both sides of the House have local examples and experience of this issue, and I thank those who spoke before me for sharing their experiences and those of their constituents. Our quarries and mineral extraction sites are of great economic importance to the UK. Nationally, we are rich in key mineable materials such as lithium, nickel, tungsten and rare earth alloys. Furthermore, we are a nation in need of more homes to help make the dream of home ownership a reality for people up and down the country; we are in need of more buildings; and we are in need of more infrastructure. Quarries are a key factor in providing many of the materials that our nation needs to build more of those things. Having said that, the Government already have 2,000 active quarries at their disposal, and I am not sure what number the Minister would need to get close to the Government’s increasingly distant target of 1.5 million new homes. Despite that, it is important to recognise that no two quarries are the same, and that their context—be that their economic value, social impact or environmental footprint—is always of great importance when considering planning permission. That is why the national planning policy framework has long made it clear that those factors are critical to assessments of the planning conditions for quarries. The current draft says that, in areas of mineral extraction including quarries, minerals planning authorities must always keep the health of local communities and people in mind, alongside the potential impact on “the natural and historic environment”. That includes making sure that “unavoidable noise, dust and particle emissions and any blasting vibrations” are accounted for, ensuring that their impacts are mitigated and controlled. It is always important that such safeguards are in place when a new quarry is proposed or when opportunities for expansion are explored. The application of these safeguards, namely the health and safety aspect, is currently governed by the Quarries Regulations 1999, which include an approved code of practice. The regulations define our quarries as “an excavation or system of excavations made for the purpose of, or in connection with, the extraction of minerals or products of minerals, being neither a mine nor merely a well or borehole or a well and borehole combined”. We are, therefore, talking not just about small sites or eyesores, but about vast landscapes of machinery, dust, industry, and health and safety risks. In 2024-25, falling from a height, being trapped by something collapsing or overturning, and contact with moving machinery accounted for 65 fatal accidents at work in the UK, or 67% of the top five most common fatal accidents. All those kinds of accidents have been recognisable health and safety concerns in quarries, and the 1999 regulations sought to prevent their number from being higher. There must be safeguards to protect the local people and local communities who suffer health and safety risks from quarries without ever even working in them. For example, it is important that proper safety procedures are discharged when planning permission is granted for quarries. That includes proper adherence to paragraphs 135 and 137 of the approved code of practice on the 1999 regulations. The code states in respect of regulation 16: “Barriers are appropriate where it is reasonably foreseeable that members of the public, including children, are likely to trespass on the site and could suffer injury if they did so… where there is evidence of persistent trespass by children which places them at significant risk, sophisticated metal paling fences may be required.” It is not just the quarry site itself that should be considered when a quarry is proposed; consideration of the impacts on local people and their local area must extend to transport concerns. The approved code of practice makes it clear that “Where site vehicles cross a footpath or turn onto a public highway, particular consideration needs to be given to safeguarding the public. This may involve discussions with the planning, highway or police authority.” My hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) presented a Bill on this very topic in 2023. I recall his concerns about small rural roads—rural infrastructure that is completely unsuited to the task—facing 100 or more lorries a day. I know that many hon. Members from across the House have shared or could share examples and figures to much the same effect, and I hope the Minister is listening to those examples closely. In assessments of planning applications for quarries or anything else, the views of local people are not a burden; they are among the most important factors. Putting local people and local concerns high up the agenda is a long established and democratic precedent that successive Governments have followed. However, I fear for local voices under the current Administration. As the Government railroad their Planning and Infrastructure Bill through Parliament, it is increasingly clear that the planning system that they are not just envisaging and planning for but actively creating is one in which it is much harder to raise local concerns. As I mentioned at the start of my speech, it is vital that the economic benefits of quarries are properly realised. That is especially the case when more homes are needed right across the country in the light of the Government’s failure to build anything close to the target for their first year in office. However, His Majesty’s Opposition do not believe that local people and local democracy should suffer for that. The Government are eroding trust in the planning system and widening the gulf between themselves and local people. That is why we are clear that local voices, and not just those in Whitehall, must play a key role in any planning decisions. Having heard the important testimonies of Members from both sides of this House, I believe that is especially the case for developments such as quarries.

• 16 Dec 2025 · Planning Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. This Labour Government’s last planning framework began pushing development on to rural areas, prioritising concreting over the green belt and green fields rather than focusing on supporting building in urban areas, which is where we need to build most. From what the Minister has just said, it sounds as though the Government are going to double down on this approach with an all-out assault on the green belt. Over the past decade in London, under its abysmal mayor, Labour has conspicuously failed to build the right amount of housing, and now it is going to fail to build the right kind of housing in the right places in the rest of England. It clearly prefers to target building in rural areas, while not building in the cities and urban areas where demand is highest and much of the necessary infrastructure already exists. At the current rate of house building under Labour, which is at a dismal low, the Government will fail by some distance to meet their target of 1.5 million homes. House building is falling under Labour, with the number of additional dwellings delivered in 2024-25 falling by 12,810. If the delivery of net additional dwellings continues at this rate, Labour will deliver its target not by the end of this Parliament but in seven years’ time. This Labour Government’s record on house building is dreadful—they delivered fewer homes in their first year in office than we delivered during a global pandemic. This is not a good sign for Labour’s first year in office, and now this Labour Government are intent on ignoring the voices of local people up and down the country while imposing top-down housing targets, disproportionately in rural areas, and tightening their grip through Whitehall-imposed targets. The reality is that Labour is prioritising building on rural areas while claiming that it is grey-belt land. It is now returning to something that the previous Labour Government did, namely garden grabbing. The previous Conservative Government removed the top-down diktats that forced councils to demolish gardens, but the Minister has just promised “the redevelopment of low-density” residential plots, introducing higher buildings at street corners and “infill development” within “residential curtilages”. It is clear that, because of Labour’s failure to build homes on brownfield land, it now has residential gardens in its sights. The Government should be prioritising and incentivising brownfield development first, and making it easier to build on brownfield sites in cities and urban areas, but they are not—they are only paying it lip service. If Labour really wants homes to be built where they are needed, it should think again about how its planning framework will actually deliver. There are many questions about the Government’s approach, but time is short, so I will restrict myself to four. The Minister states that there should be “a default yes for suitable proposals for development of land around rail stations within existing settlements and around well-connected stations outside settlements, including on green-belt land”. In that context, what is a “well-connected station”? The Minister proposes “action to secure a diverse mix of homes” and “stronger support for rural social and affordable housing”. What form will the support take? What regulations will the Government relax or scrap to support housing delivery? What incentives will they offer to get brownfield development actually to happen? Finally, the views of local people are not a burden in assessing planning applications; they are among the most important factors. Putting local people and local concerns high up the agenda is a long-established and democratic precedent that successive Governments have followed. However, I fear for their voices under the current Administration. The Government railroaded their Planning and Infrastructure Bill through Parliament and are now following up with this statement. It is increasingly clear that the planning system that this Government are not just envisaging and planning for, but actively creating, is one in which such local concerns are much harder to raise. His Majesty’s Opposition do not believe that local people and local democracy should suffer for that. The Government are eroding trust in the planning system and widening the gulf between the Government and local people. That is why we are clear that local voices, not just Whitehall’s, must play a key part in any planning decisions. We will continue to scrutinise the framework as the Labour Government implement it, and we will hold them accountable as it begins to negatively impact local communities.

• 11 Dec 2025 · National Plan to End Homelessness · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her remarks and for advance sight of her statement. This is the third time that I have had the opportunity to discuss the issue of homelessness with the Minister in the last seven weeks. I do not doubt that all hon. and right hon. Members here today share a strong desire to end rough sleeping and homelessness for good. Homelessness is a social tragedy wherever and for whatever reason it occurs. No one in our society should be forced to live on the streets, and it is incumbent on us all to do our best to ensure that our constituents can live in a safe, decent and secure home. The Minister’s reference to the horrendous figure of how many men, women and children have died while being homeless is a poignant reminder of why decisive action is critical. Although progress to that end was made under the previous Government, work remains to be done, and I offer my full support to the Government in their desire to end homelessness once and for all. As policymakers have increasingly come to appreciate, homelessness does not simply begin when someone finds themselves on the street. Rather, it is rooted in long-term causes. For example, some people have persistent issues with mental health or substance abuse, offenders may be stuck between prison and the streets with no place to go, or young people may leave the care system without a fixed destination. I am pleased that inspiration for cross-departmental working has been taken from the previous Government’s “Ending Rough Sleeping For Good” strategy, which brought seven Departments from across the Government together. The previous Government implemented StreetLink to provide more support for those who are sleeping rough or those concerned with someone who is sleeping rough. It connects local authorities and charities, and provides quicker support to those who need it most. We welcome the Government’s taking action, but we need to see details of how the plan will be implemented in the long term to achieve their goals. Homelessness has reached a record high in the past year, with the number of households including children in temporary accommodation surging to historic highs. St Mungo’s estimates that long-term rough sleeping is up by 27% in London. It is vital that the Government look at the wider picture to see all the connected pressures. Only by making a concerted effort to reduce the cost of living and make private housing more affordable will the Government get people out of temporary accommodation and into secure, long-term homes of their own. However, the Government are determined to spend ever increasing amounts on welfare, increase taxes and make it harder to employ people, and they must square that with the negative impact on people’s jobs. Labour promised to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament, as the Minister mentioned again today. To make good their promise, they must build 300,000 new homes per year, but with only 208,600 delivered in 2024-25, they are already 91,400 behind their self-imposed target. That does not bode well for the future. The homelessness strategy has only just been published, and we will of course study it carefully, but I have some initial questions for the Minister. With the Government demonstrably failing to meet their housing targets, what guarantee is there that they will meet their new target on homelessness and halving long-term rough sleeping? How will they make that promise cast-iron? The Government are pushing more responsibility on to local authorities by requiring them to publish action plans, in addition to the homelessness strategy. How will that help? Will it just result in more paperwork? The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), promised to repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824. Is that still the plan? If it is, will the Minister set out a clear timeline? The strategy mentions various new targets. What metrics will the Government use to assess the success or otherwise of the strategy? Will the Government report back to Parliament on progress regularly, and if so, with what frequency? We all want the strategy to work. In that spirit, His Majesty’s Opposition will engage constructively with the plan and scrutinise it as it is implemented.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Draft Building Safety Regulator (Establishment of New Body and Transfer of Functions etc.) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz, for, I believe, the first time. I welcome the opportunity to sit opposite the Minister again, and I appreciate her remarks. His Majesty’s Opposition views the Government’s decision to transfer the oversight of the functions and institutional workings of the Building Safety Regulator from the Health and Safety Executive to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to be a sensible one, and we will support it today. However, if the move is to be successful and effect real change in how the Building Safety Regulator operates in the housing market, it must ensure that the shift in oversight brings improvements in delivering remediation, standards of safety and the best outcomes for local communities. As I said in a Westminster Hall debate a month and a half ago, which the Minister will remember, the Building Safety Regulator was set up with the best of intentions in the aftermath of the tragic loss of 72 lives in the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017. I believe there was collective agreement on that point. The original intention behind the creation of the Building Safety Regulator was for it to play a key role in regulating high-risk buildings, to raise the safety of all buildings, and to help professionals working in the sector, thereby fulfilling the Government’s duty to provide safe, high-quality and decent homes for the public to live in. None of those are contentious objectives. Along with other Members in that debate, however, I made the self-evident point that the Building Safety Regulator is not functioning as intended. In far too many circumstances it is preventing rather than aiding the building of those safe and decent homes. It has become a constraint on building—an all-too-large part of the increasingly muddled puzzle of red tape that now actively prevents Britain from building. According to the Construction Plant-hire Association, severe delays to a key safety approval process have stalled more than 150 high-rise residential construction projects across the UK. The CPA has stated that that has been caused by the bottleneck stemming from the gateway 2 regulatory checkpoint introduced under the Building Safety Act 2022. That is because the gateway 2 regulatory checkpoint currently requires developers to gain sign-off from the Building Safety Regulator before construction can begin on high-rise schemes. The CPA states that that is “paralysing projects”. The non-executive chairman of the Building Safety Regulator shadow board, Andy Roe—a man I know very well from my London City Hall days—appears to agree with the CPA. Earlier this year, he said that the gateway regime had “very real challenges and issues at gateway 2” and involved a process that was “designed in good faith that does not work”. I recognise and welcome the Government’s announcement in June this year that they are working to reform the process and to solve the issues, but that alone will not be enough. It will certainly not make up for the severe shortfalls in their ambitious yet increasingly impossible-looking target for 1.5 million new homes by the end of the Parliament. That is because, beyond gateway 2, around 70% of the applications that get through the Building Safety Regulator’s processes are rejected, compared with the roughly 10% to 15% of applications that get rejected in the wider British planning system. Schemes are now often delayed for 38 weeks longer than the two-week target time for approval, with 60% of adversely affected schemes in London, the city with the highest need and the greatest demand. With the lowest number of additional homes for nearly a decade, the Government have left themselves on track to fall well short of their target. Blockages resulting from the Building Safety Regulator are one part of the problem, but not the only one. As the Building Safety Regulator moves from the Health and Safety Executive to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Government have an opportunity to make genuine reforms to the operation of the Building Safety Regulator. It is very important that that opportunity is seized. As I suggested in the previous debate, improved dialogue with applicants, more guidance on the applications process, machine-readable submissions as standard and an electronic file management system will all go a long way to creating a Building Safety Regulator that works faster and more efficiently, but without any compromises on standards, equality and safety. Thank you, Ms Vaz, for the opportunity to make these points to the Minister. I sincerely hope that she will be able to take them on board and use this opportunity to effect real change, unlock the housing market, and transform the Building Safety Regulator into the trusted, pro-growth and pro-development body that it has always been intended to be and that I am sure we all want to see.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  No I do not—not fully; I will return to that answer in more detail in a couple of moments. As a prime example of what more could have been done, the Bill could have addressed the democratic deficit it creates. It strips powers away from elected councillors and gifts them to unelected planning officers, as well as giving more powers to the Secretary of State. That, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg when we consider the clear contempt shown for local democracy as the Government prepare to cancel yet another round of local elections. The Bill also fails to support both those building and buying homes—no amount of centralisation in the Bill will counter the Chancellor’s failure to meaningfully support growth and cut costs. This is despite clear warnings from the Home Builders Federation that the Government must provide help for first-time buyers and reduce taxes on new homes if they are to achieve anything close to the tally of 1.3 million homes by the end of the decade that was predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility in March. Let me turn to nature—something I know many MPs have received emails about. The Bill still lacks the clarity and the answers that nature lovers seek to legitimate questions about how we reconcile the delivery of new homes and infrastructure with the need to protect our natural environment. This is most evident when we consider the Government’s focus on removing legal protections on green-belt land. Ripping up the green belt is not the answer, which is why my colleagues and I have called for the swifter redevelopment of brownfield sites. This is not least because, according to CPRE, in a substantial number of local authorities there is enough brownfield land with planning permission to meet the targets set by the Government’s standard method for calculating housing need for at least the next five years. This is something that the Bill and this Government have failed to explore. Across two Secretaries of State, several junior Ministers and almost a year of parliamentary time, the Government have pushed these measures through using their majority, but without using their common sense. Many provisions in the Bill still leave the market, home buyers, developers and local communities wanting. The triple blow—with a Chancellor running our economy into the ground while hiking taxes and a Government cutting demand-side policies to support first-time buyers—has left the country without a clear pathway to the lofty promise of 1.5 million homes. Don’t just take my word for it: throughout this process, the OBR, the Home Builders Federation, the National Federation of Builders, Britain Remade, the Countryside Alliance, Professor Paul Cheshire, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and many more industry experts and organisations, have raised concerns, either about the Bill or about the Government’s ability to meet their housing target more widely. The Government had the chance to fix this Bill, to support infrastructure projects, to back community voices and to deliver the homes that the British people need, but they have not done so. The Housing Minister recently declined to rule out further planning legislation in this Parliament. If that comes to pass, let us hope that next time, he and his colleagues listen to industry, the voices in this House and our local communities, and do what he knows to be right.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to present some of the Opposition’s final words on what I am sure the Minister will agree has been an extensive effort on both sides of the House to debate, scrutinise and amend the Bill. In the light of that, I particularly wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) for his efforts; he has worked tirelessly to push the Government to make this Bill fit for purpose. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who has made invaluable contributions throughout the whole process, both in this place and in Committee. Finally, I congratulate the Minister on seeing the Planning and Infrastructure Bill through its parliamentary journey, although I am hesitant to pour too much praise on many of the aspects of the Bill itself. When we last came to this House to consider the Lords message a couple of weeks ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner outlined the Opposition’s key concerns regarding the Bill, not least that it fails to satisfy the three tests that we have consistently used to judge how it could help to unlock the housing market, make the necessary reforms to administrative and bureaucratic burdens, and create a dual incentive for communities and developers to embrace more homes and infrastructure. As will now be abundantly clear to the Minister, it is the continued position of His Majesty’s Opposition that the Bill fails on all three counts. His boss, the Secretary of State, knows this, having admitted today that the Government will need a sharp increase in their current run rate if they are to meet the target of 1.5 million homes that they promised in their manifesto—a target that, according to his Department’s own figures, they are currently missing by a long way. Some improvements to the Bill have been made during the parliamentary process, including the Government’s concession on Lords amendment 33, which we are discussing today. We are grateful that the Government have moved on this question, and we will not seek to divide the House on it this evening.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Homelessness: Funding · Hansard source

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  I will not. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, because I know he cares passionately about this issue, but we are running out of time. I need to leave time for the Minister to respond and for my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to conclude. The figure of 126,040 households is a 15.7% increase on 2023. The Government need to rethink this policy for the sake of local government and those who have a statutory requirement to help. It is not just local authorities that are under additional pressure. Homeless Link found that thanks to the Chancellor’s national insurance hike, the 2024 autumn Budget removed between £50 million and £60 million of vital funding from smaller organisations that provide homelessness services. It is sad that the Government’s announcements on homelessness funding, as welcome as they are, to some extent merely fill the gaps that the Treasury created. It is also important that the Government work to make housing more affordable, including with proper funding for social and affordable homes. Unfortunately, the Government are not making the progress that they promised. On funding for affordable housing, despite the Chancellor’s boast when announcing the package at the previous spending review, the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted: “Upon closer inspection the promise of £39bn over 10 years is less generous than on first appearance…The small print suggests spending of about £3bn a year over the next three years, which is not a million miles away from what is currently spent on the AHP”— affordable homes programme— “This is why enormous-sounding numbers should always merit further scrutiny”. The Government are also failing on making social and affordable homes available. Figures show that, with the lowest number of additional homes for nearly a decade, the Government are on track to fall well short of the target of 1.5 million additional homes in this Parliament, possibly not even reaching 1 million. That is considerably worse than the 2.5 million new homes delivered by the previous Government, including 1 million in the previous Parliament, of which 750,000 were affordable homes. That was despite having to grapple with the pandemic for the better part of two years. In conclusion, it is clear that Ministers must work more quickly and effectively to provide local authorities and charities with the strategy and direction they need. It is vital to move at a greater pace to ease the temporary accommodation crisis, get more social and affordable homes built in the most affected areas, and finally publish the homelessness strategy first promised in July 2024 but repeatedly delayed to the detriment of those relying on it to work. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Homelessness: Funding · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and to take part in this debate about the adequacy of funding to support homeless people. At the outset, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), for securing this debate. I know how important this topic is to him, and his forensic opening speech this morning emphatically underlined that. I am confident I speak for all sides of the House when I say how appreciated his tireless efforts have been to address the tragedy of homelessness. I also thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate. Just over a month ago, I had the pleasure of coming to this place and hearing 17 speeches from a range of hon. Members on the issue of homelessness. Some of them are here again today and some are not. I said at the time that homelessness is a “social tragedy” wherever it occurs and for whatever reason. That we are back here again shows both the importance of this issue to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and its significance to hon. Members across the House. Unfortunately, since the last debate, things have got worse rather than better. The future cost of living looks worse—certainly in the wake of last week’s rather gloomy Budget. The future of house building and the Government’s manifesto promise to build 1.5 million homes appear to be in dire straits, and the state of local government finances again appears bleak and unlikely to improve. On top of all of that, the long-awaited homelessness strategy, first pledged in the Government’s manifesto a year and a half ago, continues to be late and remains unpublished. The strategy was first promised to us in 2024, with the publication repeatedly said to be forthcoming. We were then repeatedly told by the Minister’s predecessor that it was due for publication following the conclusion of the spending review—which was six months ago. In a parliamentary question answered just last week we continued to be told that it will be published “later this year”. It is 2 December today and the year is running out. It may be advent, the season of waiting, but there are many who consider this to be an unacceptable and damaging delay, particularly the charities and homeless people waiting for the Government to take serious action. It would be a very welcome early Christmas present if the Minister were to announce its publication this morning. In saying that, I acknowledge that the Government have not been totally idle. They have introduced some additional funding: a £69.9 million uplift to the rough sleeping prevention and recovery grant, an additional £10.9 million for supporting children experiencing homelessness, and £3 million for the rough sleeping drug and alcohol treatment programme. The funding is welcome, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said in his opening speech and others have mentioned, funding must come with strategy and purpose and that is something we are yet to see. As I said in this Chamber in October: “prevention must be at the heart of any national strategy for tackling homelessness”. —[ Official Report, 21 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 312WH.] That was a central focus in the last Government’s approach which produced £2.4 billion of funding to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness including the rough sleeping initiative and £547 million over the period from April 2022 to March 2025 before schemes such as the RSI were rolled up into one by the current Government. The rough sleeping initiative provided locally led tailored support and services for rough sleepers, providing direction and strategy at the most local levels. The Minister’s Department has so far failed to provide itself and its fellow Departments with a national strategy. Simply spending money will not do the job, and funding without purpose or direction can actually damage efforts to achieve the critical goal of ending homelessness. Much of the responsibility and funding for tackling homelessness lies with local government. Bills for homelessness accommodation have soared to £3.8 billion across 2024-2025—a 25% increase in a single year. There are now a record number of people in temporary accommodation, including 169,050 children in England—a 12% increase in a year. The result of that is that councils are now warning that homelessness poses one of the biggest threats to their financial viability. Homelessness is a statutory demand-led and highly acute pressure on local government. The Government’s answer so far has not been to provide more support, but to take money away from many councils as part of their so-called fair funding formula. In introducing what my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly) has called their “unfair funding” model for local authorities the Government are funnelling money away from councils predominantly in the south to send to councils predominantly in the north. It is hard to see that as anything other than a partisan cash grab and a punitive targeting of many well-run councils, especially penalising those who have historically kept council taxes low and controlled spending better. Some of the most affected areas, including the south- east, are witnessing a large rise in homelessness and simultaneously a potentially catastrophic drop in funding thanks to the fair funding policy. How does that reconcile with the need to go further to tackle this soaring issue? The answer is that it does not. It certainly does not help that councils are being punished and losing money for the crime of being comparatively well run when they are still trying to play their role in providing temporary accommodation to those 126,040 households.

• 25 Nov 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  Hear, hear!

• 24 Nov 2025 · Social and Affordable Housing: South Shields · Hansard source

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  Ministers are claiming that this is a record amount of funding for affordable housing in South Shields and across the rest of England, but why are they consistently refusing to publish a breakdown of the annual funding under their 10-year programme? Is it because the majority of the cash is backloaded into future Parliaments and then exaggerated by inflation? The small-print prospectus says that the homes must be completed by 2039. That is 14 years away. As with Labour’s house building target, is this not just an exercise in hoodwinking people by promising homes that are never going to see the light of day in this Parliament?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth), is my hon. Friend aware of the Office for National Statistics report from last week, which showed that NHS productivity has declined since the Labour party took office? Would he like to invite the hon. Member to retract what he just said?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Draft Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison, and to sit next to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). I also welcome the opportunity to sit opposite the Minister, and I appreciate the remarks he has made in this Committee. I welcome the opportunity to address this statutory instrument on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. As the Minister has said, the UK is home to Europe’s largest data centre market, and the Opposition welcome the aims of the regulations in so far as they wish to enable the market to continue to grow—and to do so with greater ease. It is fair to say that the Government and the Opposition have not always seen eye to eye on aspects of the Government’s planning reforms. The Opposition would not being doing our jobs correctly if we did not draw attention to some of the brazen power grabs made by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—and specifically by the Minister’s former boss—in the name of devolution, reorganisation and planning reform. When it comes to data centres, however, we are clear that it is the right approach to work towards a less complex system to help see them built. That is not to say that the regulations are perfect. Having looked over the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report, it is regrettable to note that the Government have brought the regulations without the accompanying draft national policy statement, which, in the Government’s own words, “will set out the framework for decision making in relation to data centres.” As the Committee pointed out, it makes it much more difficult for this House to consider and fully understand how the applications will be assessed without having seen that first. Secondly, as the Committee noted, the Government are removing the current statutory consultation requirements at the pre-application stage of the nationally significant infrastructure policy process and substituting them for non-statutory pre-application engagement with local communities. As we have seen throughout the debates regarding the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, it is not just the Opposition that are concerned about proper consultation with local communities. As the Committee suggested, it would be prudent to seek further assurance from the Minister that meaningful opportunities will still exist for local communities to make representations on proposed developments. I seek that assurance from the Minister today. The need for that assurance is underlined by the fact that the former Secretary of State waved through two data centres due to be built on the green belt that were not just deeply controversial in their local communities but rejected by the local planning committees. The green belt is not there to be torn up or concreted over on a whim, and it is vital that the Government manage to not just build data centres but build them where they are most wanted, needed and appropriate. Beyond that, there is also a concern that there is no size threshold for data centres in the regulations, nor any definition, which raises the question of whether very small developments should be captured or included. I hope the Minister will be able to clarify that. Finally, it is vital that the Government go further and faster to reduce the high commercial energy prices that put our data centre market at risk. To date, companies have sought to invest in the UK for our data centre-friendly business environment, but the energy policies of the Minister’s colleague, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, are putting that status at risk. I hope the Minister shares those concerns and makes his colleague aware of the potential damage he is doing. I hope the Minister will respond to these concerns in full and in good time, and I thank you, Dr Murrison, for the opportunity to share them with the House.

• 5 Nov 2025 · House Building: London · Hansard source

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  I am afraid I cannot, because we are under time pressure. A report recently released by the Centre for Policy Studies described London as “The City That Doesn’t Build”. It is impossible not to agree with that when the mayor’s record is put under scrutiny. Under Sadiq Khan, housing starts have collapsed in London, with the number of private homes under construction set to slump to only 15,000 in 2027—a mere a quarter of what should be expected. Analysis from the Centre for Policy Studies has shown that, over the last financial year, only 4,170 homes have been started in London, amounting to less than 5% of London’s 88,000 home target. In the first half of this year, that has hardly been improved on, with just 2,158 private housing starts, again versus a target of 88,000 per year. Those totals are disastrous. The mayor, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister should be reversing those figures, not indulging or excusing them. The picture becomes even worse when we look at affordable housing. Affordable homes had just 347 starts between April and June, which is around 15% of the total starts for 2023-24, and just 9% of the total starts in 2024-25. Prior to the general election last year, the Mayor of London was telling anyone who would listen that he needed £4.9 billion per year for the next 10 years to build affordable homes. The Government elected last July did not accede to his request. Given his appalling record over the past decade, I cannot say I entirely blame them for not trusting his ability to deliver. At the last spending review in June, as has been mentioned, £11.7 billion was awarded for the next affordable housing programme, which will run from 2026 to 2036. At the last round of Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government questions, when I asked the Secretary of State what he was doing to hold the Mayor of London to account for his lamentable record of failure, he alluded to a pending announcement. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) noted, a written ministerial statement was snuck out without fanfare a couple of weeks ago that announced temporary reforms to London house building to try to cover the mayor’s decade of failure. Some of those proposals are welcome, including the sensible removal of elements that can constrain density, such as dual aspect and units around the core of a building, as well as some of the changes to the insistence on arbitrary and unviable affordable housing targets. However, it is deeply concerning that the Government are proposing to reward the mayor’s decade of failure by giving him more power to intervene on democratically elected local councils and take planning powers away from them. Most worryingly, that gives the mayor considerable additional powers to concrete over the green belt. There is nothing in the statement about facilitating brownfield development, despite the CPRE report published last month that shows that Greater London has the capacity to deliver in excess of 462,000 new dwellings on brownfield land. The Minister is a very decent man; he is respected across the House, including by me. When we hear him speak in a few moments, I am sure he will give us invaluable insight into how the Government justify these shocking figures. However, to me, they are simply not doing enough to build or to hold the mayor to account for his failures. The Home Builders Federation has written to the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to say that, without changes to boost affordability for first-time buyers and tax cuts, the Government will miss their national housing target. Another study by the planning and environmental consultancy Lanpro suggested that, at the present of rate of building, the Government would fall 860,000 homes short of their national target—that amounts to missing the target by 57%. Together, the Mayor of London and, more recently, the Government have shown that they are anti-business and anti-growth, with spending and borrowing rising, and with inflation at almost twice the target level, as well as anaemic growth, over-regulation and rising taxation curbing any chance of a housing recovery at every turn. As I have outlined, this is being felt most in our capital city. I am deeply proud to be a Greater London MP, to have been the London Assembly member for Bexley and Bromley, to have been the Conservative leader at City Hall, to have been a London borough councillor, and to live and work in this great city. That is why I care so much about holding this Government—and specifically their shambolic colleague, the Mayor of London—to account for their abject failures to get house building in London to flourish. Action is sorely needed and desperately wanted. The Government need to do a lot more, and they need to do it now.