Government lays out housing plans but Burnham backtracks on social renting pledge
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog.
The government has set out its plans to spend an initial £10bn on a mix of subsidised housing in England, with a target of 60% being social renting.
The funding, which comes from the 10-year Affordable Homes Programme, is in line with the Starmer government’s policy and sees Andy Burnham backtrack on his proposal to rip up housing plans and boost social home building.
Burnham previously called for the programme to be spent entirely on social homes, which are more heavily subsidised and therefore more affordable than other types of government-funded housing.
He said when launching his campaign to become MP for Makerfield:
double quotation markThere’s £39bn allocated over a 10-year period … I’m saying that should be dedicated to council homes. Let’s not be coy any more … I’m saying council homes because control matters.
Under the plans announced on Monday, however, £10bn will be spent helping to build 70,000 homes outside London, about 60% of which will be social rented houses. The rest will be other types of accommodation such as shared ownership schemes and sheltered housing.
London will get another £6bn, which will be allocated at a later date.
Ministers said the investment would help bring the government closer to its promise of building 300,000 affordable homes over the next 10 years. It will be spent by 33 “strategic partners”, who will be guaranteed funding for the next decade to help deliver their plans.
The Guardian has learned that for the first time in the history of the scheme, three of those partners will be local councils, as the government looks to deliver what Burnham has promised will be “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period”.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
Andy Burnham has said he plans to travel to the US next month to join European leaders lobbying Donald Trump to supply Ukraine with Patriot missiles. The UK prime minister told Bloomberg he was “looking forward to going to New York” in September, which is when the UN general assembly will meet. He said details of the trip were not “fully confirmed” but it was “likely” to go ahead.
AI models trained on Ukrainian battlefield data will be used to stop protesters and foreign states targeting UK defence sites, railways and energy plants under a deal struck between London and Kyiv. Private companies will also be given access to the vast trove of data from Ukraine’s Avengers AI lab to help build new systems, the first agreement of its kind in the UK.
Social housing tenants will be evicted if they fail to keep their gardens well maintained under a Reform UK government, the party has announced. Lee Anderson, the party’s chair, said that if Reform came to power it would insist that those in social rented homes would be required to keep their properties decorated and gardens looked after.
Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, is on course to earn as much from the social media platform X as he does from his salary as an MP, after surging income from posts that include demands for mass deportations. Lowe has earned £932 an hour for his posts on X, formerly Twitter, since the start of the year, according to his own declarations in the register of MPs’ financial interests, which detail how many hours he has spent on X for each payment he received from the platform.
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Key events
Tory chair Kevin Hollinrake has added to the criticism of the government’s housing plans, warning against building new social housing.
Speaking to Sky News, he said:
double quotation markSocial homes are much more expensive to deliver than affordable homes. So again, we need to see the plans, exactly what that distribution will be and how much it’s going to cost.
He added:
double quotation markThat number has not changed under Labour and on the broader picture on the housing market generally, the numbers of new homes being delivered, net new additions, has dropped by about 15% since they took office.
Earlier shadow housing secretary James Cleverly said the policy “is a sleight of hand under Labour” and claimed it was “yet another unfunded spending commitment”
He said:
double quotation markThe small print shows homes won’t have to be delivered until 2039. And the funding has been backloaded to fall outside the Spending Review and this parliament, meaning Andy Burnham will never have to pay for it.
Instead, it’ll be another cheque written by a Labour PM and left for future generations to cover.
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The Greens have accused Andy Burnham of a “massive backtrack” after the government announced that only 60% of the Affordable Homes Programme would be spent on council housing.
Green MP Hannah Spencer said:
double quotation markThis is a massive backtrack by Andy Burnham, who made a clear pledge to dedicate the £39bn Affordable Homes Programme to building desperately needed council housing.
It is another missed opportunity to provide the genuinely affordable housing that is so desperately needed.
I hear from so many people who are stuck on waiting lists, living in temporary accommodation or who are homeless. Andy Burnham is continuing to let these people down.
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Climate damage would obliterate any economic benefits of new North Sea fields, analysis shows
Damian Carrington
The climate damage caused by developing the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gasfields under consideration by the UK government would destroy their economic benefits many times over, according to an analysis.
It estimates the economic damage caused by the carbon pollution from the oil and gas produced would be between £119bn and £336bn in the coming decades, compared with the £28.7bn in value to the UK estimated by Adura, the fossil fuel company promoting the new fields.
The assessment applies peer-reviewed research on how rising temperatures harm economies to the production estimates for the fields from the company. The figures are likely to be underestimates, as they do not include losses from amplified extreme weather, sea level rise or climate deaths.
The analysis has been submitted to the Rosebank consultation and to an academic journal.
The decision on whether to approve Rosebank and Jackdaw has become highly controversial, with the oil industry, some energy leaders and rightwing political parties pushing for the go-ahead. Most centre and leftwing political parties, climate scientists and environmental campaigners are opposed.
The prime minister, Andy Burnham, also faces a revolt from Labour MPs who oppose the plans, while the former energy secretary Ed Miliband once called the Rosebank proposal “climate vandalism”.
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Burnham plans trip to New York as Ukraine pleads for US-made missiles
Peter Walker
Andy Burnham has said he plans to travel to the US next month to join European leaders lobbying Donald Trump to supply Ukraine with Patriot missiles.
The UK prime minister told Bloomberg he was “looking forward to going to New York” in September, which is when the UN general assembly will meet. He said details of the trip were not “fully confirmed” but it was “likely” to go ahead. The trip would be Burnham’s first US visit since becoming prime minister in July.
During Burnham’s first trip to Kyiv as prime minister, on Monday, he reiterated the UK’s “unwavering” support for Ukraine. Ukraine in turn handed over what officials have called a “goldmine” of battlefield data to help bolster British security.
In a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Burnham reiterated there would be “no change in the UK’s steadfast support” for Kyiv.
He also urged Ukraine’s allies to send more interceptor missiles to Kyiv as it struggles under continued Russian bombardment, and co-chaired his first coalition of the willing meeting, where he said the group was doing “everything we can” to “dig into our own stocks and help others dig into their stocks”.
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Kiran Stacey
Social housing tenants will be evicted if they fail to keep their gardens well maintained under a Reform UK government, the party has announced.
Lee Anderson, the party’s chair, said that if Reform came to power it would insist that those in social rented homes would be required to keep their properties decorated and gardens looked after.
The plan is part of a wider policy that would throw out any foreign national from their existing social home, and prioritise young married couples who were born in Britain for new housing.
Anderson told a press conference on Monday: “If you go back in time and look what actually happened … the people that rented council homes had to be married under a Labour, socialist government.
“They had to look after their property. They had to keep it well maintained. The gardens done and decorated, and they were inspected on a regular basis by officers from the council.”
He added: “What is wrong with expecting people who live in subsidised housing, paid for, subsidised, by the hard-working British taxpayer … to keep their house to a reasonable standard?”
The policy is part of a promise by Reform to oversee a boom in social housebuilding, whether through council or housing associations.
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Minister rejects accusation Burnham broke promise on council homes funding
A housing minister has rejected suggestions that Andy Burnham has failed to his keep promises on council housing, as the government unveiled a nearly £10bn plan to boost “genuinely affordable homes”.
The prime minister has pledged to carry out the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period, with more than 70,000 homes, 60% allocated for social rent, to be delivered across England.
However, Burnham has faced accusation of watering down his ambitions after he previously called for the entire £39bn social and affordable homes programme to be spent on council housing.
Asked whether he accepted that Burnham had failed to keep promises made in the lead-up to the byelection, housing minister Matthew Pennycook told BBC Breakfast:
double quotation markNo, I don’t. I mean, Andy Burnham said in the byelection that he wanted to see more money spent on social rent on council housebuilding.
That’s exactly what we’re doing through this initial wave of funding.
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Government lays out housing plans but Burnham backtracks on social renting pledge
Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog.
The government has set out its plans to spend an initial £10bn on a mix of subsidised housing in England, with a target of 60% being social renting.
The funding, which comes from the 10-year Affordable Homes Programme, is in line with the Starmer government’s policy and sees Andy Burnham backtrack on his proposal to rip up housing plans and boost social home building.
Burnham previously called for the programme to be spent entirely on social homes, which are more heavily subsidised and therefore more affordable than other types of government-funded housing.
He said when launching his campaign to become MP for Makerfield:
double quotation markThere’s £39bn allocated over a 10-year period … I’m saying that should be dedicated to council homes. Let’s not be coy any more … I’m saying council homes because control matters.
Under the plans announced on Monday, however, £10bn will be spent helping to build 70,000 homes outside London, about 60% of which will be social rented houses. The rest will be other types of accommodation such as shared ownership schemes and sheltered housing.
London will get another £6bn, which will be allocated at a later date.
Ministers said the investment would help bring the government closer to its promise of building 300,000 affordable homes over the next 10 years. It will be spent by 33 “strategic partners”, who will be guaranteed funding for the next decade to help deliver their plans.
The Guardian has learned that for the first time in the history of the scheme, three of those partners will be local councils, as the government looks to deliver what Burnham has promised will be “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period”.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
Andy Burnham has said he plans to travel to the US next month to join European leaders lobbying Donald Trump to supply Ukraine with Patriot missiles. The UK prime minister told Bloomberg he was “looking forward to going to New York” in September, which is when the UN general assembly will meet. He said details of the trip were not “fully confirmed” but it was “likely” to go ahead.
AI models trained on Ukrainian battlefield data will be used to stop protesters and foreign states targeting UK defence sites, railways and energy plants under a deal struck between London and Kyiv. Private companies will also be given access to the vast trove of data from Ukraine’s Avengers AI lab to help build new systems, the first agreement of its kind in the UK.
Social housing tenants will be evicted if they fail to keep their gardens well maintained under a Reform UK government, the party has announced. Lee Anderson, the party’s chair, said that if Reform came to power it would insist that those in social rented homes would be required to keep their properties decorated and gardens looked after.
Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, is on course to earn as much from the social media platform X as he does from his salary as an MP, after surging income from posts that include demands for mass deportations. Lowe has earned £932 an hour for his posts on X, formerly Twitter, since the start of the year, according to his own declarations in the register of MPs’ financial interests, which detail how many hours he has spent on X for each payment he received from the platform.
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