Mortgage and Rental Costs

Owen Thompson Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

During the French revolution, the Queen of France supposedly said, “Let them eat cake”, after being told that her subjects were starving with no bread. Today, as the country faces a mortgage meltdown, our multimillionaire PM tells people that

“we’ve got to hold our nerve, stick to the plan and we will get through this.”

I am not sure whether he is looking to model himself as a modern-day Marie-Antoinette, but whether or not that was his intention, his gall is quite beyond belief. I will leave it to others to say that the Prime Minister is guilty of projecting

“an extraordinary, Orwellian, meaningless, evasive word salad”

when he speaks. Nor will I say that the PM is

“as much of a mendacious, narcissistic sociopath as his previous boss”.

These things are much better delivered by Ben Elton himself.

However, I will say that we are past crisis point. The Bank of England has raised the base rate 10 times since December 2021, from 0.1% to 4% as of February. Meanwhile, figures from the Office for National Statistics show that average weekly earnings have fallen in real terms in the year to December 2022 by 3.1%, which is one of the largest falls in growth since comparable records began in 2001.

Scottish homeowners are suffering for Westminster’s failure. As a result, independence becomes ever more necessary for ordinary Scots, so that they can stop paying the price for UK Government self-inflicted messes. Stronger direct action is needed to protect vulnerable homeowners from soaring mortgage costs. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), I welcome the limited action that has been taken so far, but a purely voluntary scheme that stops repossessions for 12 months and allows for lower payments for six months is not enough to protect many householders from this disaster.

My constituency of Midlothian is especially vulnerable to this Westminster-triggered chaos. Midlothian’s population is growing, placing increasing demands on services that aim to tackle poverty. Just under a quarter of Midlothian’s children—4,400—were living in poverty going into the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. Midlothian has higher rates of economic activity and lower rates of unemployment than the Scottish and UK averages, but we also have lower average wages across some groups, in common with many other former coalfield communities. The falling value of real wages will hit many residents hard, and the higher than average house prices in Midlothian suggest a vulnerability to economic downturn and other cost of living pressures, particularly mortgage hikes. The average price of a house in Midlothian in October 2022 was £243,500, compared with the Scottish average of £193,730. This combination of higher house prices and lower wages could spell disaster for many.

The Chancellor’s mortgage charter is really a sticking plaster on a broken arm, and my constituents deserve better. These residents have been forced to stretch their budgets to get on the housing ladder in the first place, and are now utterly vulnerable to rising costs and labour market turbulence. It is hard to believe that the Tory party was ever seen as a bastion of high finance and fiscal propriety. Del Boy and Rodney could do a better job. In Scotland, we are fortunate that we have an alternative way out of this mess, and now more than ever we need to make sure we cast this PM and his ultra-rich cronies into the dustbin of history by forging ahead with independence.