Oral Answers to Questions

Rob Marris Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has read the document. Part of what we are doing is making sure that mortgage fees are more transparent. Alongside that, we are ensuring that utility bills are more competitive for families and cutting the electricity tariffs that we talked about earlier. We are also making sure that people can get a better deal from their water company. This is all part of driving down costs for families and helping the working people of Britain.

[Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

What will really support people with home ownership is massively increasing the supply of new homes—not, as the autumn statement does, simply subsidising people to bid up the prices of existing homes. After five and a half years in office, it is time that the Chancellor took some responsibility. He has a woeful record on house building, exacerbating the market failure that has led to restricted supply and consequently high prices. When will the Government increase supply very markedly by starting a real programme of mass house building—of homes for rent as well as to buy?

[Mr Osborne]

Over the course of this decade we will have built more social homes than in the entire period when the Labour party was in office. Affordable housing should also be housing that people can afford to buy, as well as rent, and we are doubling the housing budget and undertaking the biggest house building programme since the 1970s. It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman was not with me in Wolverhampton yesterday seeing the new jobs being created at the Jaguar Land Rover engine plant as we make sure that we build homes for the people working at that plant.