Speeches by Reeves.

“I absolutely accept those constraints, which is why, with Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, we announced the increase in the number of places on construction courses—a combination of apprenticeships, bootcamps, the technical excellence colleges and incentives so that people want to move into the FE sector to…”

“One of the reasons why we brought forward, from the spending review, the £2 billion extra for the affordable homes programme is that we know that the construction sector and the house building sector want some stability and certainty that they can do deals and make commitments around building—so not living hand to mout…”

“They now forecast that house building will be at its highest level for 40 years. That is very welcome, but going back to the further and faster mantra, we will want to do more to get those houses built—in your constituency of Cities of London and Westminster, I dread to imagine what the average house price is. So we do…”

“Obviously, it would be helpful for people’s living standards if a lower proportion of their wages was spent on rents. It would also have quite a big fiscal impact on councils. You gave me the number recently that your local authority spends £95 million on temporary accommodation. If we were actually building the social…”

“Yes!”

“On the issue of the green belt, we are very keen, on those areas that we call grey belt, to have more development. We are also, in the next few months, going to announce the outcome of the review that the Deputy Prime Minister commissioned on new towns. A number of proposals have come forward for brand-new new towns, a…”

“That £2 billion is a down payment on the spending review. We wanted to announce it early, not because that is the total sum of the money that we will make available in the spending review but, as I said to Rachel Blake, because we wanted to give the sector certainty that the money would be there into the new financial …”

“I don’t think anyone thinks that the current system of welfare, particularly around sickness and disability benefits, is actually working today. It is not working for the people in receipt of those benefits, not working in terms of ensuring that we have a decent participation rate in the economy and not working in term…”

“First of all, the important work that Charlie Mayfield is doing is about helping to keep people in the labour market, rather than supporting people who are not in the labour market, so those things are a bit different. Charlie Mayfield is doing a really important piece of work for us, and we know that the best thing th…”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your question, Mr Dean. We think that about 17% of people who are on personal independence payments are also in work. I cannot tell you what proportion of the 800,000 that you referred to are in work. The OBR have committed to work over the summer to look at the package that we annou…”

“The point of our reforms is that we want to support those people with the most severe health and disability needs, which is why, in the Green Paper that we published alongside the Secretary of State’s statement, we are consulting on additional support for those with the most severe needs. The changes only kick in when …”

“We know that there are hundreds of thousands of people with a disability who want to work, and there are many people with disabilities who already do work. We want to give them more support, whether that is adjustments in the workplace or training, for more of them to fulfil their potential. I do not want to write peop…”

“I do not want to pre-empt the work that is now going to take place in assessing that, but I am confident that those impact assessments do not reflect what will happen, because it is inconceivable that you put £1 billion into targeted, personalised support and it makes no difference. In fact, all the evidence, under the…”

“Yes. This is not the only thing that we are doing, remember. We are beginning to roll out the free breakfast clubs—”

“Yes, that is what they are going to provide, but this is not the only thing that we are doing. This £1 billion back-to-work package is just one of a number of measures that we are doing to help people into work—apprenticeships, which we have already had a conversation about, the increases in the national minimum wage a…”

“I am absolutely confident that the system we inherited is not working and has to be reformed. I think everybody agrees that the current system is not working. There is plenty of evidence from past programmes that we can do more to support people into work. If you look at the international evidence, you do not see such …”

“We have been working on these for quite some time.”

“We have been in government for nine months, so since the election we have been working on the sorts of reforms that we need, and we set them out a couple of weeks ago.”

“We think this is money well spent. I am very pleased to put money into this, because it can improve people’s lives and have a net positive for taxpayers as well. It is a good scheme, and as Louise Tinsley has said, it is on top of the £240 million we announced in the Budget for these trailblazers. The “Get Britain Work…”