Speeches by Curtis.

“I am going to finish on devolution. You have made the argument—it is one that I and the incoming Government agree with—about the benefits of devolution. I have a quick point of clarification to start off. You said in a previous answer that one thing on the docket for you or whoever does your job in a couple of weeks’ t…”

“You can say objectively whether you accept that it cannot be rolled out across the country within the current review period without more money from the Treasury.”

“Who is it defined by? There are lots of Select Committees right across this place, and in our meetings everybody constantly reports back to us about just how frustrated they are by the consultation process that they are being instructed to follow by some higher power. Who is this higher power and how do we get them to …”

“The one other element we have not touched on is that we do not have a demand-side stimulus at the moment. There is a broad agreement that Help to Buy did not necessarily achieve the policy aims or was not efficient enough. Do you think it is time to look at a new demand-side stimulus? In particular, do you think it is …”

“We both definitely agree on the benefits of this, but we cannot achieve it unless we have a wide devolution roll-out. If you take my area, for example, we have been begging the Department—we would have come in on our hands and knees and begged on a daily basis—for devolution, and the Department has basically constantly…”

“But if the argument the Department gives for why it cannot be rolled out to places that want it is a fiscal one, that means that the solution needs to be a fiscal one. So do you think there needs to be, if devolution is going to be a priority for the incoming Prime Minister—”

“It is a slightly different question, though. What I am trying to push on is whether, thinking back over the things we have done, there are places in certain pieces of legislation where you wish we had gone further, or changes to the NPPF that you now think, “I wish I’d pushed it further.””

“To summarise, broadly speaking, your view would be: “We got the balance right on planning changes. We wish we’d done them quicker.” I am going to talk about speed for a minute. One of the things that we want to deliver as a Government, and which I think we should be very proud of, is more new towns. I was looking back …”

“Would you like to see the next Government bring in such legislative change?”

“You mentioned in a previous answer that the Department was looking at introducing a new national house builder. That is an interesting and innovative idea, which I think many people think is going to be necessary to disrupt the broken market that the CMA has identified in house building. Is there any more you want to s…”

“So your point was about what is next for the places that you have just listed; it was not about thinking about further areas in the country.”

“That is what I am coming on to. If we accept the argument that devolution is really good, particularly for the local areas that have it, and if we are heading in the direction of moving more powers down, particularly with fiscal devolution, there is a real fear that, if you have large chunks of the country that do not …”

“But if this is going quicker, the longer you leave it and the slower you roll it, the more left behind places get. There clearly needs to be an aim to get that full coverage as quickly as possible, but there clearly is not the funding in place currently in the Department to do so. Do you think that should be one of the…”

“That will require more money from the Treasury within this spending review.”

“You must have a view.”

“Will touched on the housing numbers; the numbers delivered so far in this Parliament are nowhere near where we would like them to be, and running short of where we need to get to in order to build the 1.5 million homes we talked about. I think we all accept that there are many reasons for that, most of which are outsid…”

“Can I start by pushing on one of the points Lee made? Reflecting on your time in office, it is a very big Department and you have been putting a lot of legislation through. Do you think there is an argument—as many people have suggested, and particularly given the agenda of the next Government—for splitting the Departm…”

“Chris Curtis, Milton Keynes North.”

“Have you had conversations across Government about reforming that so that this can be sped up?”

“But that will need more money from Treasury.”