Speeches by Pennycook.

“Absolutely. Hopefully we can move on to the importance of local plans. They are the best means for local areas to shape development in their particular geography.”

“No. I think any Government would reasonably say, “We will keep the call-in criteria under review and we may look at them in future years,” but I have not personally had any discussions about specific changes to the call-in criteria. We have made it clear and I should be clear—and it is on record that the DPM is clear—t…”

“About specific changes to the criteria, no.”

“We have not announced any plans to amend the call-in criteria, if that is what you are—”

“We have not taken an in-principle decision to try to boost the number of call-ins. I do not know whether Jo wants to say more, but we will take them when they fit the appropriate criteria. Politics will not be a factor in that. There are very clear criteria for when applications can be called in.”

“I do not accept the premise of that question. What I would say, Mr Cocking, is that we have not taken an in-principle decision to try to increase the number of call-ins. We make specific decisions on the basis of individual applications, where they meet the criteria set out in the written ministerial statement that I r…”

“We have been very clear that we will make full use of the intervention powers that are available to Ministers. We have not introduced those powers, but they are available to Ministers as a result of actions taken by previous Governments to put them in place. We will make full use of those intervention powers in cases w…”

“There are very well-known and well-understood criteria for call-ins. Those are set out, Mr Cocking, if you are interested, in a written ministerial statement by a previous Government. Those are the criteria on which call-ins are judged. They can be called in by the Secretary of State when they are judged to be matters …”

“Yes.”

“We absolutely do not underestimate the impact that those LHA freezes had on tenants in terms of eating further into their disposable income and in some cases putting people at risk of arrears and evictions. That is very real. A significant amount of funding went in earlier this year as a result of investment the previo…”

“My response to them would be what I have said to them many times before in many different forums. We are very heavily engaged with providers to understand the pressures on them and what they are seeking. We have tried to strike the right balance—we think it is the right balance at present—with the proposal of CPI plus …”

“That is a really important question. The collapse in affordable housing supply that we have seen over recent years and those figures that we inherited are partly because the pressures on councils’ and housing associations’ headroom are so acute. That is for a number of very laudable reasons; we need councils and housin…”

“I definitely want Parliament to be engaged in what they look like, and obviously any Member would be able to respond to a consultation.”

“We need to build far more affordable homes overall, and in particular social rented homes. That is what the Government have committed to. That is why our manifesto contained a very clear commitment to the biggest increase in social affordable house building in a generation. On the particular set of questions that you h…”

“Absolutely, and local authorities played a huge part.”

“We can get into social as a distinct subcategory, which, as you know, we want to prioritise. The level of social rented home output has been extremely low over the last 14 years. I would say that is a result of deliberate policy choices. For example, you will recall that when the coalition Government entered office the…”

“This is total affordable.”

“It stands to reason, from the commitments that we have made, that we are talking about increasing levels beyond what they have been over recent years. From the most recent figures that we have, from 2022-23, 58,000 total affordable homes were delivered through the system.”

“I cannot give you that figure, for the following reason, although we will, again, have more clarity as we progress through the Parliament. It is not as simple as taking a proportion of the total supply and saying, “That will definitely be social and affordable housing”. That is because, as the Committee will know, appr…”

“I should be very clear, because this has been misunderstood in some of the coverage, that we are not cutting all references to beauty from the NPPF; we are removing the additional references to beauty that were inserted by the previous Government. We are doing so on the basis of objective feedback that suggests that th…”