HOUSING Minister Alex Norris has defended the government’s plan for a reset and denied that it is ignoring the issue of immigration.

Speaking to GB News, he said: “We won an election in July based on commitments that we made to the public about the change we want to see for our country, and they want to see for our country.

“What we’ll be setting out in the days to come is what that change looks like.

“I think it’s reasonable that the government of the day should want to be really candid and honest about delivery. It’s not been something that we’ve seen in recent years, but we are.

“So that’s what we’ll be setting out. It’s perfectly consistent with our approach at the election, and we think it’s the right way to do it in order to for the public to be able to hold us to account.”

Asked why immigration appears to be absent from the plan, in a discussion with Ben Leo and Isabel Webster, he said: “I don’t think that people will see a want for either commitments or energy around immigration from this government, nor indeed have any issue holding us to account for it.

“We will be very clear about what we’re doing. We’ve already made significant progress in terms of flights returning people who didn’t have the right to be here.

“We’ve increased processing capacity to speed that up. We’ve made investments on the continent with our partners to disrupt organised crime.

“We’ve made, we’re making, and made agreements around the world in order to make that process easier too, as well.

“So, there’s lots of activity going on. We’ve inherited, of course, a failing system, and we’re tackling that.”

On the Prime Minister’s approval rating, he said: “We’re not living and dying by day-to-day opinion polling.

“We’re making long term investments and reform in this country to deliver the change that people want to see. That’s what we set out at the election, the deep, greater detail people will see this week as well.”

He added: “All choices we make are political choices. We inherited a £22 billion black hole in the public’s finances.

“We make no apology for addressing the pay, whether it’s nurses, teachers, or people who’ve had really hard times themselves and have to step up every day for the nation.

“We make no apologies in what we’ve done there. There are difficult choices. This was one of them.”