Speeches by Pennycook.

“If you were to provide me with the reasons why compulsory purchase powers, council tax premiums and the various orders that are available are not sufficient, I would be very interested in that.”

“Addressing empty homes is a crucial tool, among many, for addressing the housing crisis. It will not solve that crisis in and of itself. I just say that because I slightly push back at the argument that we do not need to build at the scale we think we do because there are sufficient empty homes around the country to ta…”

“Urban uplift is 35%.”

“It was 35%.”

“Lots of this information is out there in the NPPF consultation document. The Committee, I am sure, has read that document before coming here today. Some of the information is in there, but I will flesh out what we mean by the revised standard method that we have inserted in that NPPF document. Again, I am holding the d…”

“Let me address both your points. To the thrust of your initial question, which was that we have not seen enough output from the new homes accelerator, I would gently say that we have been in office for just over four months. We have acted, by common consensus, fairly rapidly on a number of fronts. It is already helping…”

“Shall we come back to those?”

“This is not impossible, though. You are absolutely right—and the Government are very clear—that planning permissions do not equal houses built. We have taken a very deliberate decision, through the changes we are recommending through the NPPF, to boost the total number of homes that we are seeking to build, through a r…”

“There are a number of points in there, which I will seek to address in turn. In general terms, can we do this? Yes, we can. Comparable advanced democracies around the world build houses at a rate far higher than ours. For example, France builds 300,000 houses a year and has done for some time.”

“We have a sense of the trajectory. We will set out more details when we publish our long-term housing strategy next year. The precise curve of that trajectory is dependent on factors like, as I have said, the spending review settlement next year. At that point, we will have more clarity. We will, of course, bring that …”

“We will publish as normal net additional completions. We are not going to set out an annual target that we think we will meet. There are too many factors that feed in to make that a reliable target to set. It is a whole-Parliament target for a specific reason. You will have a sense of progress. You are absolutely right…”

“Chair, perhaps I have not been clear enough. We will publish planning application statistics as normal. You will be able to see how the system is transformed.”

“The trajectory we are on to meet the total 1.5 million will become clearer after, for example, we have settled the multi-year spending review next year. That will give us the total amount of Government investment in social and affordable housing, for example, which is an important contributing factor to the total targe…”

“We will report net additional completions in the usual way. We will continue to update Parliament on the progress of our target. Just to be very clear, you referenced 300,000 homes a year in your initial question. That was the previous Government’s target. They did not hit it once in 14 years. We deliberately did not p…”

“Since the 2012-13 financial year, local authorities, fire authorities, and police and crime commissioners have been required to determine whether the amount of council tax they plan to raise is excessive. The Secretary of State sets thresholds on excessiveness and knows the referendum principles for different classes o…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. Let me take them in turn. The Government are committed to a fair funding settlement for local government. We will set out further details in the usual way in the upcoming local government finance settlement, which will be presented to Parliament. On the £2.4 billion figure,…”

“I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for that question. She is absolutely right; after 14 years of the previous Government’s record in office, local government is on its knees. We have a system on the verge of collapse. We had multiple years when in-year spending pressures were ignored. The headroom that we have p…”

“The Government certainly recognise the pressures on local authorities and the burdens placed on households as a result of 14 years in which local government was run down. We are determined to turn that situation around, as I have said, by providing the headroom that local authorities need to get ahead of some of the ch…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that point, and I will relay it to the Local Government Minister. On the general principle, we are determined to rebuild local government from the ground up. That is why we are providing multi-year funding settlements to councils and removing a number of ringfences, and are committed, as I sa…”

“I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are not talking about council tax bands in this urgent question; we are talking about the thresholds that remain in place. We are committed to those thresholds. As I am sure you would expect, Mr Speaker, we will set out more details about the local government finance settlement…”