Speeches by Rayner.

“Thanks very much. As you know, we have been very busy since we last met, with lots of legislation going through Parliament and the spending review, which, as you say, gave us a huge boost of £39 billion over 10 years for social and affordable homes. We have made it clear that we would like to see 60% social rented with…”

“We are doing work on particular areas around planning. For example, we are doing quite a lot of work around digitising. You will have seen the work we did. When buying a property, the way in which you have to go about getting some of the information you need means that most house sales fall through, because this inform…”

“I don’t have 80, just to clarify—nowhere near. They fit in my office.”

“The long-term housing strategy is due to be published later this year as well. We have set that target to make sure that we deliver on that.”

“I have a delivery team that I pull together from people within the Department. That reports to me, and we look at how we can pull the data and how it means something. I am all for a graph—I hate spreadsheets where I am trying to look all over the place to find something. As a Secretary of State, it drives me mad if I c…”

“I am expecting it from the taskforce imminently. They have done a fantastic job—thank you to Sir Michael and his team. I expect them to come forward very soon with their recommendations and for us to take them forward. New towns—you are obviously a fan of them—have been incredibly important in terms of how we build com…”

“The previous Government tried to do something on this, in fairness. They recognised the problem. The legislation that we inherited has some fundamental flaws and needs some changes and tweaks, which is what my Housing Minister has been working through. We are clear that the Law Commission’s recommendations need to be i…”

“We have been really clear that we have to implement the recommendations that came from phase 1 and 2 of the Grenfell inquiry, which was around a single regulator. Some of the changes that we have recently made to the Building Safety Regulator, with Andy Roe being taken up as the interim chair and leader, is about makin…”

“Not necessarily on council tax being collected in one area and spent in another. Obviously, there is the way in which grant funding applies to councils, and the fair funding review is looking at how much a council can raise through its other forms of expenditure, as opposed to how much need it has in the area. That is …”

“In short: yes. We are looking at that. We are looking at low-interest loans. We have done work on some of the restrictions and reversing some of the 2012 changes to right to buy and around new homes, giving people confidence that, if you are putting up capital to build council housing, it is not going to disappear with…”

“Can I add one other thing? As Deputy Prime Minister, I am really keen on building stronger communities. We have been mapping data across different data points, whether it is deprivation, cost of living or how much people are paying for x, y and z. There is a lot of overlap between some of the challenges particular area…”

“I smile because you goad me. The challenge is that it is always a bit evolution rather than revolution. I definitely want to see more push. We have had that. There is more fiscal devolution coming to some of our pathfinder mayors. They are getting more control over their budgets. More Departments are pushing more down.…”

“Absolutely.”

“I recognise the frustration. My gentle pushback is that we are finding our voice more. I say that as a northern working-class MP. If you look at where we are now, compared with 30 years ago, it was always the Secretary of State who was making those decisions for areas such as Lancaster, Manchester or areas that feel to…”

“That is a really important question. As you said, the expansion of devolution through our devolution priority programme will include up to 8.8 million more people in that programme. It is important to say that it delivers them more powers. We are doing work already on filling the gap for mayoral combined authorities, w…”

“I think it has been really good. It is challenging because every day you have a zillion and one things to do. My colleagues who have been in Government before will recognise that getting the opportunity to meet, discuss and understand those priorities can be challenging. I can genuinely say that where I have found diff…”

“Well, I would not say it was a trade-off that we were doing; we did our own zero-based review very early on, when I took over the Department. We conducted a line-by-line review to ensure that every pound of taxpayer’s money is spent on the priorities. We reprioritised a lot of the budget significantly and ended what we…”

“Yes, the long-term housing strategy is part of that, but this is another piece of work we are doing which is separate to that.”

“We are doing some work on that, and full details will be set out in the autumn. We have been looking at different types of models, whether affordable or shared ownership. We are also looking at announcing a permanent mortgage guarantee scheme in the coming months. Again, developers will say, “I will only build the hous…”

“Israel’s recent action is appalling and counterproductive, and we strongly oppose the expansion of military operations, settler violence and the blocking of humanitarian aid. We have suspended free trade agreement talks and sanctioned extremists supporting settler expansion in the west bank. It is a long-standing princ…”