Speeches by Pennycook.

“It will not surprise my hon. Friend to hear that I wholeheartedly agree. The delivery of critical national infrastructure is essential for economic growth, accelerating the UK’s efforts towards clean power by 2030, and energy independence. The Bill in question will include old measures to streamline the delivery of inf…”

“Having not had the chance to do so personally, may I begin by welcoming the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) to his place? I think it is fair to say that the important issue of cross-boundary planning co-operation has received far too little attention in this place over recent years, and I therefore very…”

“We want that ban to come in at the point when the Courts and Tribunals Service is able to implement it, but in short order. We made a commitment in our manifesto to bring it in immediately in a one‑stage process, not the two‑stage process the previous Government proposed, when it was also subject to subjective and not …”

“I have mentioned the new homes accelerator, which seeks to go in on large, consented sites that are not being built and take action to ensure that they are. There are measures in the NPPF that strengthen build-out, in terms of what we know makes a difference—proportions of social and affordable housing; mixed tenure in…”

“We will report progress on a number of different metrics, such as the number of planning permissions coming through the system, TA levels or any number of other metrics that can show progress in various areas. As I said, we will report net additional completions as normal. The Committee, the House as a whole and the se…”

“We are not going to set interim annual targets, but I am absolutely confident, for the reasons I have given, that we can hit that target if we take forward every element of our plan. I have said this repeatedly. It is a set menu; it is not à la carte. We have to do every single thing that we are committed to doing as p…”

“We are not going to set interim targets. There is a whole-of-Parliament target for 1.5 million new additional completions, as I said. We will continue to monitor and update Parliament on our progress toward hitting that target.”

“I am Matthew Pennycook MP, Member for Greenwich and Woolwich and the Minister of State for Housing and Planning.”

“Thank you, Chair. At the outset, let me say thank you for extending the invitation to come and speak to you today about the Government’s plans on housing and planning. On the 1.5 million new homes target, I am convinced it is deliverable and, more importantly, I believe it is essential. I and the Deputy Prime Minister …”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”

“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 …”

“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.”

“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…”

“Shall we come back to those?”

“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…”

“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…”

“It was 35%.”