I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I welcome the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) to her new position. I wish her and her team all the very best.
I have been a Member of this House for six-and-a-half years. In the countless contacts I have had with my constituents over that time, one issue has come up more often and more consistently than any other: housing. I am sure other hon. Members would say the same. Whether it is a lack of affordable accommodation, standards not being met, calls for housing to be built on one site or campaigns against it being built on another, the subject dominates inbox, postbag and surgery alike. Meeting that challenge requires action on many fronts, but at the heart of it all is the need for a clear, fair and, above all, effective planning system.
My two Conservative predecessors at the Department for Communities and Local Government did more to reform planning than all their Labour counterparts combined. More than 1,000 pages of policy was reduced to just 50 and the Housing and Planning Act 2016 did much to streamline and speed up the process. It is a record of real action and real change that is already paying off. The year 2015 saw more planning permissions delivered than in any year since records began. Almost 900,000 new homes have been delivered in England alone since the start of 2010.
As I said just last week, however, there is much more to do. The Prime Minister has been absolutely clear that, if we are going to build a Britain that works for everyone, we have to have a housing market that works for everyone. That means doing still more to tackle the housing shortage by giving communities greater certainty over development and reducing the time it takes to get from planning permission to completion. This Bill will help us to do just that.