Housing: Pensions and Deposits

Lord Tebbit Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness that one of our key concerns is to ensure that we encourage this culture of young people saving for their retirement. Of course, we do not want to do anything which would expedite them getting into financial difficulty by accessing their pension pots early. We are very excited by young people’s level of uptake of the auto-enrolment pension scheme. Our ambition and aim is to do anything we can to support them and to build more affordable homes.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that the problem in the housing market is a shortage not of money, but of houses? If we do anything at all to put more money into the market before we have dealt with the problems of planning consents and got the houses built, we will only inflate the prices of houses even more.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I do agree. I am sorry that I am not the Housing Minister answering this Question, but it is important that we are committed to ensuring the housing market works for everyone. Of course, there is more to do. That is why we have announced an extra £17 billion in funding for Help to Buy since 2017 and reformed stamp duty so that 80% of first-time buyers will not pay tax. We are absolutely on a track that does not mean an increase in house prices. The important thing is that we focus on supporting first-time buyers. The number of first-time buyers is at an 11-year annual high.