Speeches by Pennycook.

“I want to be really clear that it is a systemic problem, rather than the result of bad behaviour on the part of any individual developer. Developers, particularly the volume house builders, are acting entirely rationally in the framework they operate in, in which land is inherently constrained. That is at the root of l…”

“It is a support fund to help those councils to bid into that £39 billion pot. We have sustained the public works loan board rates for another year, and we are allowing councils to benefit from the rent convergence policy that we have just announced. There are a variety of ways in which we can get councils back on the p…”

“That is a separate pot, forgive me.”

“We have taken a number of steps through the changes we have made to the planning system to try to modernise the way that local planning authorities operate—I recognise that some people here were very involved in the debates on the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, for example. We are modernising planning committees…”

“First, we need a planning system that facilitates enough new homes coming forward. That is partly related to the amount of land we release into the system, but also to how the planning system works and the extent to which it is streamlined, effective and provides for timely outcomes. I think the changes that we made to…”

“In general housing supply terms?”

“I think there is a short-term localised impact, depending on how many homes are built in a particular housing market area. In aggregate, the best analysis we have is departmental analysis, based on academic research, that estimates that a 1% increase in housing stock should, everything else being equal, decrease prices…”

“There are a couple of things—I will bring Mel in to add to what I am saying—but we have already started to see improvements in the number of first-time buyer mortgages. They have picked up by up to 329,000 in 2024; that is an increase of 16% on the previous year. The house price to earnings ratio is coming down in a he…”

“It would be a fool’s errand to have a target for house prices, and there is a degree of short-term fluctuation. I will give the Committee my best sense of what will happen. Two things can be true at the same time: there is strong evidence to attest to the fact that building homes of any tenure, including for private ma…”

“I will try to clarify as best I can, and Melanie may then want to add to that. It is very difficult to estimate the precise number of homes that you will get from a 10-year programme. We made the best estimate we could, which is that the programme, over its lifetime, will produce around 300,000 homes, about 180,000 of …”

“I am sure there will be further conversations with the Treasury on policy matters, and we keep all these matters under live review, as you would expect.”

“We now have a really constructive relationship with Treasury colleagues across all the areas we will discuss today, on the demand side as well as the supply side. Let us take social and affordable housing, which you have rightly focused on in these opening questions. Now that we have clarity on rent convergence, on the…”

“Any member of the Committee can have a go and google it. You will be able to very quickly find where the official statistics are.”

“After this session ends, I will come and google it on your phone.”

“The net additional completions?”

“At the risk of relitigating the extensive exchanges we have had on this subject, we have a very clear and ambitious 1.5 million target over the course of this Parliament. Every member of this Committee, every Member of the House and every member of the public can track our progress towards that target in terms of net a…”

“I do not remember any real issues of tension. We certainly had a live discussion about, for example, what implementing rent convergence would look like in terms of its practicalities. We have since ironed those out and made that announcement in recent weeks.”

“When we established the programme we set out our estimate that the new programme could deliver around 300,000 homes over its lifetime—about 180,000 of which are homes for social rent. That will become more refined as bids come in from providers, both through strategic partnerships and continuous market engagement route…”

“Through the £39 billion we will open the new programme for bids in the coming weeks. When those bids come in, both the GLA and Homes England—respectively controlling the funds—will set target ranges for what is to be produced through that grant funding. Just like the last affordable homes programme—which ultimately had…”

“At the risk of slightly worrying my Treasury colleagues, would I have liked more money for all those pots? Absolutely. But we have what we need to take forward the very ambitious plans that we have set out. I might bring Melanie in on this, but the new National Housing Bank is a novel public finance institution that wi…”