Speeches by Powell.

“The range of challenges you outlined have slightly different solutions. An obvious question would be whether you think it is appropriate to be using AHP money to buy any of these uncontracted or unsold 106 agreements. Of course, if there are quality issues, presumably you would not want AHP money to be spent on them. H…”

“One thing we asked the Deputy Prime Minister last week was when we would finally get this plan on temporary accommodation, which we have not seen much progress on. If that is something you think would be a good use of this, and councils are buying this up for TA, perhaps that could be included in that plan, but we have…”

“Do you know how many have gone through the clearing process?”

“Minister, when we are looking at improving 106, a key thing lots of witnesses have talked about is the element of uncontracted and unsold section 106 homes. Can you give us your latest assessment of the scale of this problem?”

“I am Joe Powell, the MP for Kensington and Bayswater.”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his defence of teachers. I am sure that he welcomes the pay rise for teachers of 5% last year and 4.4% this year, funded by the Budget.”

“Might the Chancellor elaborate on the national debt that the previous Government inherited in 2010, compared with what we inherited last year?”

“Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. Of course, the Conservatives tanked the economy, and when there is such a dramatic decline in growth, increasing it from a very low level to a slightly higher one is relatively straightforward. The economic growth figures for the first quarter of this year, as we know, are…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because it is important to talk about debt. I was disappointed that the shadow Chancellor failed to acknowledge that the inheritance in 2024 was total national debt of close to 100% of GDP, which was up from 60% in 2010. The annual debt payments that the Governmen…”

“I congratulate the shadow Chancellor on securing a debate on this motion. When this Government came into office, they found Britain’s public finances vandalised, the economy wrecked, debts soaring, sky-high mortgages, a cost of living crisis that has touched every household in this country, and a mismanaged pandemic, r…”

“I am glad that business confidence is at a nine-year high—that is from an independent assessment. The decisions that the hon. Gentleman refers to are already making a difference. Does he oppose the 4 million extra NHS appointments that this Government have managed to secure so far; the three trade deals with the US, In…”

“indicated dissent.”

“I thank the Minister for all her hard work to bring together procurement information centrally for the first time and to improve the quality of that data. What progress has been made to push that out to the public in the dashboards and analytics that will help us track and improve the public procurement system and moni…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A combination of financing instruments was used to fund the Elizabeth line. That approach has huge potential for big infrastructure projects in London, including the proposal for a new St Mary’s hospital. It cannot be right that we are reliant on the Treasury capital budget for proje…”

“My hon. Friend is right. It is welcome that the Building Safety Regulator will be getting 100 new staff, and that Andy Roe has come in to chair it. I am sure the Minister can give more detail. We also need to see faster progress on remediating buildings in London. The new London remediation board, co-chaired by the Gre…”

“My hon. Friend is right. There is obviously no quick fix to this problem. It takes time to build new housing and ramp up the pipeline for it, but the current situation is not tenable. London boroughs compete against each other for increasingly expensive temporary accommodation with very low levels of quality. First and…”

“I thank my neighbour for his intervention. We all welcome a fair funding settlement that recognises the huge levels of regional inequality in this country, but it is correct and fair for it to be based on accurate and up-to-date data and for that data to include the very high proportion of Londoners’ incomes spent on h…”

“I thank you, Mr Western, for chairing this debate, and all the non-London Members for sitting through a discussion about London’s economic growth potential. I will not go over all the great contributions from hon. Members from across the House, but I will summarise a few areas in which there has been quite a high degre…”