Speeches by Blake.

“That was a nice segue into talking more about policy measures; I want to ask some questions about house building and the forecasts. We had some fascinating evidence yesterday from Professor Miles from the OBR. I pushed him on his methodology for the forecast of the 0.2% growth and the number of homes he anticipates, an…”

“Thanks. In the discussion yesterday, we talked about further measures that they might score—so we discussed development corporations within the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. They have said that they think the target will only be 1.3 million, so what more needs to be done in order to make sure that the target is met…”

“One more element that we discussed with Professor Miles was the factor of rents, and the cost of rent, particularly in London, and how that could be factored into our house building process. One of the questions that I wanted to put to him was about the impact of more affordable housing and what that could do to foreca…”

“Do you anticipate the construction sector being able to step into that space given that we still have some time to wait to see the developments come forward?”

“Which elements reduce the estimate from the OBR’s 0.2% to your 0.1%?”

“Dr Saleheen, have you been able to do some thinking about distributional effects?”

“On the distributional analysis, there are many families who are not in the right type of accommodation for their own income. That includes people who are paying private rent at a level that is disproportionate to their income and who really need to be in affordable housing. Have you been able to do any distributional a…”

“Thank you. That moves us neatly on to Ms Curtice. Just based on the new targets, your estimate was 0.06%. If the Government tilt towards travel-to-work areas, your estimate goes up to 0.13%. If they tilt towards cities, it goes up to 0.14%. Can you identify that drop-off from the OBR’s forecast? Due to the timing of th…”

“On what are you basing your assessment of deliverability on the timing?”

“Dr Saleheen, I want to ask about some of the policy reforms, specifically on house building, and their impact on growth. The OBR assessed the impact of the house building policy changes on growth by looking at the overall grey belt land—land capacity—and at the supply of labour in the construction sector. It did not th…”

“Are you able to determine whether it is more in terms of land supply or the capacity in the sector, or is it an aggregate of those two factors? Obviously, you can move capacity in the construction sector more easily than changing land supply.”

“I would like to understand in detail where we lost those 200,000 houses from the Government’s target. You have forecast 1.3 million.”

“Would it be fair to say that the impact on rents is the closest that you would get to it, and that the cost to local authorities hasn’t, at the moment, played into your modelling?”

“Yes.”

“In temporary accommodation costs.”

“And there is a particular element to the overall market. In London, £4 million a day is spent on temporary accommodation, which is private rented accommodation that local authorities lease. Is it possible for you to forecast and model the impact of a reduction in terms of positive growth, or is that—”

“So it is feasible that development corporations might be scored. In terms of decision making, they could move development forward.”

“Do you anticipate scoring the Planning and Infrastructure Bill?”

“May I pause you there? What happened between their saying, “Yes, we quite like this,” and your putting some numbers to it?”

“I want to come on to one of the other policy measures, which is around house building. Last time we were here, you said that you did not have enough detail to do the scoring, and now we are seeing a material, additional and durable impact on transactions and potential output. Professor Miles, could you talk us through …”