Jeremy Corbyn says Government has built 12 homes for every press release about new development

The Labour leader made the joke responding to the Budget statement

The Labour leader responded to the Chancellor's Budget (PA)

Jeremy Corbyn has made light of the Government for continuously re-announcing its plans to build a new town at Ebbsfleet.

The Labour leader told the House of Commons that the Government had put out a dozen press releases about the development zone – but built less than 300 homes out of the targeted 15,000.

“They’ve made 30 Ebbsfleet announcements and they’ve managed to build 368 homes – it’s 12 homes for every press release!” he told MPs in the House of Commons

“We need, obviously, a vast increase in press releases in order to get any homes built in Ebbsfleet or indeed anywhere else ,” he joked.

Ebbsfleet is a development area in Kent, and is connected to central London by high speed rail, which opened in 2007.

The emerging town has a station, located is 10 miles outside Great London, with trains running on the HS1 line taking under 20 minutes to St Pancras station.

In early 2014 the Government announced its intention to build 15,000 homes on the site, with the Chancellor fronting £300 million of funding.

Mr Corbyn made his comments in response to George Osborne’s Budget statement on Wednesday.

The Chancellor did not mention the town in his speech – though Mr Corbyn may have been banking on him doing so when he prepared his response, on the basis of the frequency of previous mentions.

Mr Osborne had little to say on the subject of housing in his Budget, but said would set out “measures to speed up our planning system, zone housing [and] development”.