Matthew Pennycook: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. He is right to say that there was an historical subsidy in the form of construction debt, but that has been paid off in most circumstances. HRAs are self-financing and most have made a profit since 2008. That is not a direct economic subsidy, as the Conservative party would have us believe. There may be other reasons why Conservative Members think that the...
Matthew Pennycook: That is not a public subsidy and the hon. Gentleman misunderstands my point. HRAs are self-financing. We are not talking about the two thirds of tenants in council housing who claim housing benefit, but there are problems in that regard. That is an economic subsidy from Government.
Matthew Pennycook: My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I agree wholeheartedly. I served as a councillor before being elected to this place, and I give the Government credit for reforming the council house financing system. However, it is misleading and highly questionable to state that the rationale for the policy is an economic subsidy. That point needs to be made for the record. I will, for the...
Matthew Pennycook: Does my hon. Friend agree that equivalised resources are a thorny issue that the Government have encountered before with child benefit and the household benefit cap level? A blunt gross household income threshold does not take into account the needs of different-sized families.
Matthew Pennycook: My hon. Friend is making an important point. Does she agree with me about the earlier point made by the hon. Member for South Norfolk? It might be a good one, in the sense that housing associations may be able to use their funds to do more innovative things to meet housing need, but that option will not be available to local authorities because they are being treated differently.
Matthew Pennycook: We do know where, in the sense that the Government are very clear in the impact assessment that one outcome that they want is a contribution to deficit reduction. I can understand that, because they are not making a great job of it. I can understand why they would want to squirrel the money away, but does my hon. Friend not agree that, given the level of housing need and the housing crisis,...
Matthew Pennycook: My hon. Friend is making a good point about the clause that speaks to wider concerns with the Bill. On Second Reading, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) put it well when he said that many measures in the Bill, including this clause, cut against the grain of the Government’s laudable commitment to localism.
Matthew Pennycook: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Gray. I will be relatively brief, but I speak to raise concerns about clause 107 with a particular example from my constituency in mind. The Mayor of London and Transport for London are consulting on a nationally significant infrastructure project, the Silvertown tunnel, which is a road tunnel linking the Greenwich peninsula to...
Matthew Pennycook: I support the amendment. We all welcome development and new homes, but I strongly agree that garden cities and corporations, when they are bringing development forward, need to put sustainability and place making at the heart of their plans. That has a particular resonance with something that I am very passionate about, which is climate change and energy efficiency. New subsection (2B)(e)...
Matthew Pennycook: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Gray. I rise to oppose the new clauses and new schedules. In doing so, I will try to be as measured as my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham and for Dulwich and West Norwood, but I too am angry. Let us be clear: this is not just one group of a bunch of new provisions that have been tabled; taken together, the new...
Matthew Pennycook: My hon. Friend makes a good point. If I was a housing association tenant, or if I ran a housing association, I would be worried by the implications of the new clause and new schedules for tenants and for the sector as a whole. Turning to some of the specifics, I have a number of concerns about the consequences, intended or otherwise, of the proposals. The most important is that the new...
Matthew Pennycook: I thought I would give my hon. Friend a useful illustration from my constituency. Overseas buyers regularly turn up at City airport, get the docklands light railway over to Greenwich and buy off-plan—not buy to let but off-plan, and sometimes in cash—just to hold the property as an asset, rather than seeking to rent it out.
Matthew Pennycook: I also commend the Secretary of State and her officials for the part that they played in securing the Paris agreement. With that agreement in place, Britain will need to be more ambitious, if anything, when it comes to emissions reductions yet the Government are struggling to meet their renewables target, particularly when it comes to heat and transport. As in so many areas, the Chancellor...
Matthew Pennycook: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment she has made of the total projected expenditure on (a) the feed-in-tariff scheme, (b) contracts for difference, (c) the Renewable Heat Incentive and (d) the capacity market mechanism in each year between 2016 and 2021 on her Department's current estimate of wholesale prices.
Matthew Pennycook: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what wholesale price and carbon price forecast scenarios her Department uses when forecasting total projected expenditure of the Levy Control Framework.
Matthew Pennycook: The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in giving way so often. Can I press him on that point? Leaving aside the threat of deterring people from entering the profession, we get the sense from what the Government have said that the infrastructure or provisions are in place for those training places. For example, every new nurse and midwife on a training programme needs a supervised or...
Matthew Pennycook: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times limited removal directions have been used since the policy of giving such directions came into effect on 6 April 2015.
Matthew Pennycook: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what representations his Department has made to the Indian government on re-opening border crossings to Nepal since discussions were held between the British and Indian ambassadors to Nepal on border blockages on 30 October.
Matthew Pennycook: I do not want to cut off the hon. Gentleman as he comes to a conclusion, but if it was so patently obvious to everyone that that was the precise meaning of the manifesto commitment, why was industry taken by surprise?
Matthew Pennycook: It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow some very thoughtful contributions. I would like to single out those of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). As Members might expect, I did not agree with everything they...