Early ministerial career In September 2012 Lewis was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government, working under Eric Pickles. In July 2014, Lewis was promoted to Minister of State for Housing and Planning, when the prime minister brought the portfolios of Housing and Planning together for the first time under his premiership. He claimed that there had been a "dramatic swing" in public opinion – with almost half of people now in favour of new housing in their area. This related to the new National Planning Policy Framework, the primary framework for town planning in the country, which some argued made it substantially easier for developers to build on greenfield land. As the local MP, Lewis declined initially to support local campaigners who were fighting against the Conservative run county council's controversial plans for the proposed King's Lynn incinerator. By 2012 he had joined all fellow local MPs in expressing concern with the proposal and, after a change in leadership of the county council, the plans for the incinerator were dropped in 2014. Lewis previously sat on the House of Commons Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission. In 2013 Lewis was critical of local councils, including many Conservative run councils, planning council tax rises in 2013 against the wishes of the Government, saying that there was "still massive scope" for councils to cut "waste and inefficiency". He has also criticised the Local Government Association for producing proposals to give local councils more freedom over their levels of council tax in the future. Labour MPs called upon IPSA to investigate whether Lewis was using taxpayer funds for inappropriate political purposes after it was revealed that he had claimed £37,000 for "research briefing and other parliamentary associated assistance" to a political campaign consultancy. In August 2015, it was reported that Lewis claimed £31,000 of hotel expenses over a two-year period following stays at the Park Plaza hotel near Parliament. Lewis stated that he opted to stay in London rather than travel home to Essex and all the claims complied with parliamentary rules. In January 2016, the Labour Party unsuccessfully proposed an amendment in Parliament that would have required private landlords to make their homes "fit for human habitation". According to Parliament's register of interests, Lewis was one of 72 Conservative MPs who voted against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property. The