Mortgage Market

Debate between Claire Hanna and Andrew Griffith

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Like others, the FCA has talked about the number of people in any one year whose mortgages are repriced. We do not know what the price of those will be. It seems that around 1 million to 1.5 million people are affected, so a significant number, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) mentioned. There are also many savers in society. Rather than looking at what is happening, what we are doing to help is making those difficult decisions. We are not unleashing unfunded, uncosted spending plans on the public purse and we are trying to get through this to help people get to a world where inflation is falling, the cost of living pressures on them are reducing and we can get the economy growing again, which will provide good employment opportunities for her constituents.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I wrote to the Minister earlier this week about the continuing problem of mortgage prisoners, following a comment from the Treasury that it is open to proportionate solutions for those frozen in that position after their mortgage lenders were sold from 2008. Recent reports state that the Government made a profit of £2.4 billion from selling on those mortgages. Will the Minister work with me, and with advocates for the tens of thousands of people trapped in those precarious financial circumstances, to find those proportionate solutions?

[Andrew Griffith]

The hon. Lady raises the plight of those who have been unable to access even the mortgages at elevated levels that we have been talking about here. I understand the problem; it is something I have given significant time to with my officials and I have read the recent work conducted by the London School of Economics. I hope that, in that spirit, she will also recognise that it is a complex issue and that within that overall collective there are many different individual fact patterns. While I am open to finding solutions, I hope she will recognise that it is not easy and there is no one-size-fits-all answer.