Mortgage and Rental Costs

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. There are three more speakers before the winding-up speeches, which I expect to start at about five past four, and I expect two Divisions after that. I ask any Members who have taken part in the debate and are not present to make their way to the Chamber now.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I would like to speak in favour of the motion. Time is pressing, so I will touch briefly on the scale of the problem facing the UK.

It is fair to say that many families—indeed, up to 7.5 million—face a very difficult challenge at present because of the increase in interest rates and the effect on mortgages. As we have heard, it has been calculated that that increase means around £2,400 extra on household mortgages every year, which is £1,000 more than the increase in mortgages in the United States.

The situation affects both buyers and renters, because landlords put up rents as well, but the Government are proposing only a voluntary scheme, which obviously falls well short, and about 1 million families are likely to be missed by this inadequate measure. Earlier, the Shadow Chancellor set out a much more effective scheme, which I obviously commend to the House.

Given the lack of time, I will move on swiftly and speak about how the Government’s mortgage bombshell is affecting local residents in Reading and Woodley. This crisis is making what is already a difficult housing situation far worse for local people in our part of Berkshire. We have had high house prices and rents for some years, given the shortage of supply and many other related housing matters.

To give colleagues a taste of the situation locally, terraced houses in Reading town centre can sell for as much as £300,000, so these are quite expensive properties. There is also a real shortage of property and a large waiting list for local authority properties. For a family house, the price may be as much as £600,000 or £800,000, so we are already talking very large amounts of money. As I said, renters face additional problems. We have an issue with dangerous cladding not being removed in some cases, as well as issues with leaseholders and landlords. There are, therefore, serious problems in our area, and that is on top of the national problems facing families, which I mentioned earlier. Colleagues from across the House have also mentioned the 20% rate of food inflation and the UK inflation rate being the worst in the G7.

I would like to point out some of the problems facing individual constituents. Without giving away too many personal details, perhaps I could just give a flavour of the problems involved, and I hope the Chief Secretary will reflect on them. One constituent—a gentleman called Peter—is in a good job. He has a young family, with two children, and they live in a three-bedroom house. They face an increase of £800 a month in their mortgage, and they simply do not know how they will cope.

Another constituent, Donna, who lives in a flat in Reading town centre, faces a £400-a-month increase. Again, that is an absolutely incredible increase in what she has to pay for her home. Sadly, she is one of many residents locally who have been affected by the cladding scandal and by delays in removing various types of dangerous cladding. She is already under enormous pressure because of the emotional stresses and strains of having a flat with cladding problems. In addition, she now faces this enormous extra increase in her payments. She is self-employed and has a small business. Imagine how this feels to her. This truly is a dreadful crisis.

I realise that time is limited, and I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) can get in shortly, but I ask the Chief Secretary to report back to the Chancellor just how dire the situation is and how it is affecting people up and down the country—both my residents and those of colleagues from across the House. I also urge him to think about the five-point plan outlined by the shadow Chancellor, which has been well researched and well received across the industry.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Alex Cunningham is the final speaker.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I well remember 1979, when mortgage interest rates soared under Thatcher’s Tory Government as the Bank of England base rate hit 17%. Those who were buying homes at the time knew all about it. My wife Evaline and I, both in relatively well-paid professional jobs, had moved home a couple of years before and, like many others, had maximised our mortgage to secure the house we wanted for our growing family. Little did we know that the cost of our mortgage would almost double in a couple of years.

My elder son John says he remembers Evaline and I regularly sitting at the table to go through our finances, often robbing Peter to pay Paul, while realising that Peter would still have to be paid with plenty of interest on top. Yes, the anxiety goes well beyond mortgage holders; it affects the whole family. Like many homeowners today, we contemplated selling up and moving to a smaller home, but the reality was that we would not only have lost our new home; we would not have been any better off.

I have huge sympathy for people today who are seeing their mortgage costs go through the roof, largely because the Tories crashed our economy by making some extremely daft decisions when our economy was still trying to cope with the double whammy of Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine and our exit from the European Union. We had it tough when our costs doubled, but today’s Tory mortgage bombshell is so much worse.

Moneyfacts data suggests that the typical rate of a two-year fixed-rate mortgage has increased to almost 6%, almost double the rate of a year ago, and the Resolution Foundation estimates that 6.5 million households will be affected by the post-mini-Budget rise in mortgage rates by 2026. Other huge consequences emanate from the Government’s decisions. This week, economists warned that there is a real risk of job losses and potential recession. The latest forecast for economic growth suggests that the UK is struggling to get out of the slow lane, with growth of just 0.2% forecast for the year.

On Sunday, I watched the Prime Minister ducking and diving under quite simple questioning from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, and it sickened me that he had the nerve and the gall to tell mortgage holders to hold their nerve. He lives just down the road from me, and I wonder if he would like to sit down with a few of my constituents whose fixed-rate deals are coming to an end within the next few weeks. One of them faces an increase from just short of £800 a month to £2,600 a month. I would like the Prime Minister to outline how that constituent should hold their nerve and retain their home.

That same constituent, like everyone else, is not only seeing their mortgage go through the roof. They must also cope with a near 20% increase in food prices, which according to the Office for National Statistics is the greatest hike in 45 years. That can be added to the extra burden of council tax increases across the country, as local authorities collect the Government’s social care levy because the Tories have so drastically underfunded social care in recent years.

What are the numbers on Teesside? In Stockton North, 8,900 families face an increase of £1,400 this year. The pain is the same across the Tees valley, with 11,900 families in Stockton South paying £1,800 more, 9,000 families in Darlington paying £1,400 more, 7,200 families in Middlesbrough paying £1,200 more, 9,300 families in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland paying £1,700 more, and 8,000 families in Redcar paying £1,500 more.

The Tory mortgage crisis has other wide-ranging impacts. The Government’s failure to build sufficient homes over the last decade has led to limited supply and forced prices up, making it more difficult for people to get on the housing ladder. We also see developers putting some projects on hold and scaling others back. The Government’s housing figures, published today, show that affordable housing providers have stalled or stopped schemes, as they are experiencing what they say is a “perfect storm” of build cost inflation, rising labour costs, material unavailability, building remediation issues and a duty to support tenants through the cost of living crisis. Developers cutting the number of homes they are building will have an inevitable impact on jobs not only in the building sector but across the supply chains that support it.

We could go on forever about the excess profits being made by the banks, as they cash in on higher interest rates, but that appears to be fine by the Government. Now that times are good again for the banks, they need to do so much more. They should concentrate on helping their customers instead of their share price and their bottom line. I wish I could be confident that they will all act, but I am not. It is down to the Government to take action to compel them to do so.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now come to the wind-ups.

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[Andrew Griffith]

I always make a point of not commenting on the markets, in whichever direction they move. The responsibility of Government is to act and the responsibility of this Government is to deliver. We will control what we can control and the markets will do what they do.

The mortgage charter lays out that there will be a minimum 12-month period—I believe that is double the Opposition proposal, but I am happy to take an intervention on that—from any first missed payments before any repossession action is taken. It is important that our constituents understand that these measures offer comfort to those who are understandably anxious about the impact of higher rates on their mortgages and provide support for those who would get into financial difficulties. More broadly, the mortgage market itself remains robust and, because of the actions the Government have taken over the past 13 years, the average homeowner remortgaging in the past year had close to 50% loan to value, indicating that most have considerable equity in their homes.

Help for mortgage holders, but help for savers too: this Government are committed to ensuring that people are supported to save and can access a wide range of competitive savings products. The current range of options available to savers includes some of the highest rates that we have seen in recent years on both instant access accounts and the more relevant fixed-term products, which represent a better apples-to-apples comparison with fixed-term mortgage rates. The top instant access savings rates currently on the market offer around 4.2% and the top one-year fixed rate is much closer to the mortgage rate at about 5.8% annual equivalent rate.

Tackling inflation remains the Prime Minister’s and this Government’s No. 1 priority, and it will remain so until it is tamed. Allowing inflation to go on at the current rate or to grow higher would be the biggest threat to our collective economic security. While we continue on our fight to fight inflation, we will also do what British public expect; we will look at how we can grow the economy over the long term, improve productivity and ensure that no communities are left behind. We continue to take forward supply-side policies to increase the productive capacity of this economy and encourage workers back into work, including rolling out the largest ever expansion of free childcare. All that will set us up for greater productivity.

Let us contrast that with the Lib Dem plan to pile on to inflationary pressures an unfunded £3 billion a year. That is eclipsed only by Labour’s £28 billion a year—Interruption.] Labour Members do not want to hear it; they are talking among themselves. The IFS said that Labour’s £28 billion plan would cause interest rates and inflation to rise. Paul Johnson said that

“additional borrowing both pumps more money into the economy, potentially increasing inflation, and also drives up interest rates.”

That really would be a Labour mortgage bombshell.

In this barmy weather, those thinking of taking a summer holiday should remember that Labour’s economic policy has more flip-flops than the average surf shop: national insurance, corporation tax, the pensions cap, North sea gas, and, yesterday, shelving reform of high street business rates. The fact is that no Labour Government have ever left office with unemployment lower than when they came to power. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) reminded us, the note left by Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2010 said, correctly: “I’m afraid to tell you there is no money left.”

This Government are taking action on the economy. We are taking the tough decisions to bear down on inflation, we are supporting the vulnerable, we are helping the economy to grow, and, as the amendment states, we are helping mortgage holders with our new mortgage charter.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

To inform the House, I shall put the main Question first. Should it be negatived, I will then put the Question on the amendment.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

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[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not want to comment on whether there is an appropriate sanction, because I am the Chair of the Committee on Standards, but the tweet that the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) referred to says that several Conservative Members

“voted against the motion and in support of the grooming and mutilation of children”.

I suggest that that is incitement of violence against those Conservative Members and Opposition Members who voted against the motion. It is probably also actionable, and if any Conservative Members want to pursue that course of action, I will stand with them.

I wonder how we ensure that we protect the privileges of this House, namely freedom of speech. I would protect the freedom of speech for the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) to be able to say what he did in debate, though I thought it was absolutely abhorrent and despicable. It also chills my bones, as I suspect it does yours, Mr Deputy Speaker, because it feels as if a new section 28 is being introduced by the back door for trans people, just as we used to have for lesbian and gay people. How do we ensure that freedom of speech is guaranteed for the whole House and that we are not abused for doing our job properly?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for her point of order and the forward notice of it and Sir Chris Bryant for the further point of order. While we do have privilege to speak as we wish in this House and rules to ensure that that freedom is used responsibly, what a Member says or retweets outside the House is not a matter for the Chair. Nevertheless, Members should remember that moderation is desirable outside the Chamber as well as within it, especially when criticising Members for their conduct in parliamentary proceedings. I am sure that this is not the last we will hear of this particular matter.