Oral Answers to Questions

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

After six years as Chancellor, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm whether home ownership went up or down between 2010 and 2015?

[Mr Osborne]

When I first became Chancellor we were in the aftermath of a collapse in the housing market, so it took a couple of years to get house building going again. House building starts are now up, and the number of first-time buyers has risen by 60% since I became Chancellor. It was down by 50% under the last Labour Government.

[Seema Malhotra]

There you have it, Mr Speaker. We know from the English housing survey that 201,000 fewer households owned a home in 2015 than five years ago, compared with an increase of 1 million under Labour. By 2025, nine out of 10 Britons under 35 on modest incomes will not be able to afford a home. Rents in the private sector are soaring, and the housing benefit bill is likely to be £350 million more than the Chancellor forecast last year. Is his record on housing investment one of failure, with British families now literally paying the price?

[Mr Osborne]

Housing starts are higher than they were when I became the Chancellor, but what people need—homeowners or people who are building houses—above all is economic security, which is what the Government are seeking to deliver. Frankly, the fact that the Labour party is now getting its advice from Yanis Varoufakis and the revolutionary Marxist broadcaster Paul Mason does not suggest to me that it has an answer to economic security. Presumably Labour chose those two because Chairman Mao was dead and Micky Mouse was busy.