Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Clive Efford and John Healey
John Healey
There were failings in the way banks and the financial services were regulated in this country and every other developed country. What I do regret is that perhaps our Ministers listened too hard to the Conservative party, which was urging us to cut the regulation of the banking sector. What I am proud of is that when that deep economic recession hit, driven by the global banking crisis, ours was a Government prepared to step in to try to help the country through that deep recession—to help people stay in jobs, to help businesses keep going, and to help people stay in their own homes. I was proud to play a part in that with a £4 billion affordable housing programme building the affordable homes to rent and buy that people needed across the country—£4 billion in 2009-10 cut under this Government to less than two thirds of a billion pounds.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
One of the first acts of the Conservative-Liberal coalition when it came into power was to scrap the home start scheme which had the aim of keeping us building homes, instead of seeing them stalled because of the lack of backing from the banks. Fewer homes were repossessed during the deepest recession we had had in nearly a century compared with any recession under the Tories.
John Healey
My hon. Friend and I worked very closely on this and he is right. The kick-start programme of putting public money into re-starting building on sites that were stalled because of the deep global banking crisis and recession was part of building the homes we needed and creating the jobs we needed, and because we also insisted on apprenticeships in return for that support, we got more apprenticeships across the country. In terms of the mortgage rescue scheme, my hon. Friend will remember that in the last Tory recession of 1991 they put nothing in place. They were not concerned about homeowners who were faced with the repossession of their homes, and despite a much deeper recession and much more serious economic problems, our mortgage rescue scheme meant that more than a third fewer people than in the 1991 recession had to lose their homes and lose the basis on which they were building their lives.