Angela Rayner has insisted the government can meet its target to build 1.5m homes over the next five years as ministers pledged an extra £350m for housebuilding.

An extra £300m has been injected to the affordable homes programme, a move ministers believe will allow 2,800 additional homes to be built.

More than half of these extra homes will be for social rent, the government has said, while more than 250 council homes are expected to be made available through a £50m boost to the local authority housing fund.

The scale of the challenge is stark, with more than 123,000 households in temporary accommodation – including nearly 160,000 children – while almost 6,000 families with children are in bed and breakfast accommodation.

Asked whether she was worried about whether the government could meet the 1.5m homes target, Ms Rayner said she was “determined” to meet the challenge.

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“We will meet that target because we can’t afford not to,” she told broadcasters.

“We have 1.3 million people waiting on housing waiting lists, there isn’t a person listening to this show that will not know somebody who is desperate to get on the housing ladder.

“So, therefore, we’re determined to turn that tide.”

And pressed on whether the expected 250 increase of council homes was a big enough increase to meet the need, Ms Rayner said: “We think the measures we’re taking will unlock thousands more council and social homes as part of that programme. We want to help councils who want to build those homes.

“We see 160,000 children in temporary accommodation, and the cost of that on local authorities is significant, as well as the impact on children’s life chances,” she said.

“So we need to build the homes, and we’re doing everything we can to turn the tide of decline and build the houses that people desperately need.”

The extra £350m promised comes on top of £500m that was earmarked for affordable housing in October’s budget.

According to housing charity Shelter, at least 90,000 social rent homes would need to be built each year for the next 10 years to clear most social housing waiting lists in England and to house every homeless household.

A report by MPs last month found that a record number of children are living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit as England’s homelessness crisis pushes councils to breaking point.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said there was a “dire need” for housing reform, with the lack of affordable homes forcing cash-strapped local authorities to haemorrhage their funds on temporary accommodation.

A recent Sky News investigation found that children in some parts of England were spending as long as five-and-a-half years on average in temporary accommodation.

The length of stay has increased significantly in many areas since 2021, with particularly long stays in London and the South East.

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Elsewhere, ministers are expected to set out plans to crack down on exploitative behaviour by rogue landlords who they say are costing the taxpayer by claiming uncapped housing benefit in return for providing homes that are unsuitable.

Last week the government announced that a law to force social landlords to investigate and fix hazards within a set timescale will be phased in from October.

The legislation is named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died in December 2020 from a respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in the social home his family rented in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

The government’s top candidate to become the chief of the borders and immigration watchdog has told MPs he lives in Finland and commutes to the UK when he needs to.

John Tuckett, who has worked as the immigration services commissioner for six years, was questioned by the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday ahead of the appointment of the next independent chief inspector of borders and immigration (ICIBI).

Asked if he lives in commuting distance from the London office, he replied: “No I don’t, I have a family home in Finland and I come across to this country whenever I need to.”

When MPs put it to him that he would expect to inspect the UK’s borders without being a resident here, he added: “I work in UK and I would be in the UK, I’m resident in Finland.”

Mr Tuckett told the committee he pays for travel and accommodation himself and “always have done”.

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He also said he would be fine to work five days in the office if needed, adding: “I have done this kind of work before, and when I was asked this question at my interview, I said, I think that my judgment is you need time when you’re available for ministers, visits, all the things where you need to do face to face.

“You also need time where you can think, sit back, write, because you don’t write a report, you know, in 10 spare minutes in between two major appointments. So I think there’s a 60-40, split between for the chief inspector this is.!

Mr Tuckett was announced as the preferred applicant for the chief inspector position by the Home Office in January, with previous experience as the chief executive of the Marine Management Organisation and working for the Archbishop of York.

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Announcing the recommendation of Mr Tuckett for the role, migration minister Seema Malhotra said: “His track record of delivering complex change programmes across government, combined with his current role as immigration services commissioner, makes him ideally suited to take on this crucial independent oversight role at an important time for our border security.”

If Mr Tuckett is confirmed as the next inspector, he will replace interim watchdog boss David Bolt – who has served since June last year.

Mr Bolt’s appointment came after the previous borders watchdog David Neal was sacked in February last year amid claims he breached the terms of his appointment.

He later voiced his frustrations of the time taken for his reports to be published, and said there were “very few” ways of speaking out about his concerns on security.

Elon Musk joined Donald Trump in the Oval Office as the US president signed an executive order allowing the tech billionaire to make large-scale reductions in the federal workforce.

As head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory group, Mr Musk says he wants to add “common sense controls” to government and ensure taxpayer money is spent wisely.

The executive order requires government agencies to work with DOGE, in some cases so they can be “eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law”.

In addition, the agencies have been told to “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service”, with exceptions for immigration, law enforcement and public safety.

Answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office, Mr Musk was asked to respond to accusations he is orchestrating a “hostile takeover” of government in a non-transparent way.

The Tesla CEO and owner of X said “the public voted for major government reform… and they’re going to get what they voted for. And that’s what democracy is all about”.

“We have this unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative,” he added, while stood alongside his son X Æ A-12.

Mr Musk also spoke about what he described as a lack of Treasury controls. “Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on things that matter to the people… it’s just common sense. It’s not draconian or radical”.

When challenged about what checks and balances are in place to ensure accountability for Mr Musk, who is unelected, he replied: “We are trying to be as transparent as possible… I don’t know of a case where an organisation has been more transparent”.

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Another reporter raised the possibility of conflicts of interest, pointing out Mr Musk has received billions of dollars in federal contracts.

“All of our actions are fully public,” he says, adding that he fully expects to be “scrutinised nonstop” – comparing it to “a daily proctologist exam” – but also admitting “we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly”.

“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” he said. “So nobody can bat 1,000.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Musk posted an attack aimed at judges who have issued rulings that paused Mr Trump’s executive actions.

“Democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup,” Mr Musk wrote on X.

The president voiced a similar complaint in the Oval Office alongside Mr Musk.

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“We want to weed out the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don’t want you to do that,” he said.

“So maybe we have to look at the judges, because that’s very serious. I think it’s a very serious violation.”

Mr Trump also held discussions with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House.

The president repeated his pledge to “take Gaza” and move its residents to Jordan and Egypt, something the king has rejected.