Oral Answers to Questions

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

4. How many people owned their own home in England in (a) May 2010 and (b) the latest date for which figures are available.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

9. How many people owned their own home in England in (a) May 2010 and (b) the latest date for which figures are available.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

The number of households in home ownership has remained relatively steady since May 2010. There were 14.45 million in the year 2010-11 and 14.32 million in 2013-14, according to the latest available data from the English housing survey.

[Stephen Williams]

The figures I gave did show a fall, so we are not disagreeing on that. The fact is that home ownership peaked in 2005 and fell dramatically in the five years of the last Labour Government. The private rental sector is an attractive part of the housing mix for a large number of people, and in the past 12 months this Government have put in place a huge number of reforms to regulate the sector. They include the regulation of letting agencies to ensure that they all belong to an ombudsman scheme, that they are completely transparent about their fees and that they publish a how-to-rent guide and a model tenancy agreement. That is a vast improvement on what we had before.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I hear what the Minister says, but what would he say to those young people in their 20s and 30s, one in four of whom are still living in their parents’ home? How is he going to provide for them, given that the Prime Minister said that he wanted young people to be rewarded with a home of their own?

[Stephen Williams]

The Government recognise that most people want to own a home of their own. That is one of the reasons that we have put in place the Help to Buy scheme, which has now helped 88,000 people around the country. In the hon. Lady’s own constituency, 81 families have used the scheme to buy their own home.