I thank the Minister for introducing these government amendments. We have no problem at all with them. They seem fairly straightforward in what they want to achieve, but I would like to make the point that this is going to help provide only a small number of homes. I wonder what estimate the Government have made of the number of homes this will provide and what the demand is for this sort of housing. It would be quite interesting.
We are concerned about the number of houses being built, full stop, particularly since the Government abandoned their mandatory housing target. We feel that this Bill should be used to help the Government to concentrate on providing sufficient quality housing that includes both affordable-to-buy and social housing. Perhaps the Government could then bring forward an amendment on properly defining “affordable housing”; that would be a very useful amendment to see going forward.
As I said, I have absolutely no problem with this; I am quite happy to support the government amendments. However, we feel that the Government need to balance their interest in progressing this with their progress in meeting their stated target of 300,000 new homes.