Priti Patel
Main Page: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)
As I said earlier, the problem with the housing market was sub-prime lending, or lending to people who could not afford to pay back the mortgages, not 95% mortgages, which operated perfectly well in this country for many decades. The criteria for lending are now much stricter, and nobody will get a mortgage who is not properly able to pay it, not only with today’s low interest rates but with interest rates that are clearly likely to rise at some point in future.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
T3. With the London elections on the horizon, should Londoners elect a Mayor who has frozen the Greater London authority’s share of council tax, keeping more money in people’s pockets, or a man who is more concerned with finding ways of dodging paying his own taxes while increasing everybody else’s taxes?
Mr Pickles
Personally, I am backing Boris. I was very shocked to find out about Ken Livingstone’s tax arrangements. It seems very odd for somebody who is standing for Mayor to have a way of avoiding paying tax. In particular, I hope that he has a reasonable explanation about the two people he employed and why those matters were not properly reported to the Electoral Commission.