Housing and Planning Bill

I must point out to the Chairman of the Select Committee that we have been clear from the beginning that we need to see a shift in this country. We have had the farcical situation in which we in this place talk about affordable homes but refer only to homes that people can rent. We know that 86% of our population want to buy their own home, and it is therefore absolutely right that affordable homes should include those that are available to buy. We make no apologies for creating a new product and for turbocharging that new product to ensure that we get 200,000 such homes built over the course of this Parliament. We already have many hundreds of thousands of homes in the rental sector across this country, and we now need to give first-time buyers a chance. To be blunt, that is exactly what we put on the tin in the general election manifesto. We will deliver on our mandate to deliver starter homes.