Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what support her Department is providing to help first-time buyers access mortgage finance and enter the housing market.

The most sustainable long-term method to improve housing affordability and help people into homeownership is to increase the supply of housing. The government is committed to building 1.5 million homes this parliament.

The Government is bringing forward ambitious reforms to streamline and improve the planning system to deliver on its Plan for Change. We have announced major changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility to deliver 170,000 additional homes and add £6.8bn to the economy by 2029/30.

The Government recognises the difficulties some prospective first-time buyers face in buying a home and is committed to helping them get on the housing ladder. To address these issues, we introduced a new permanent Mortgage Guarantee Scheme in July 2025. It is designed to support and sustain the availability of low deposit mortgage products for credit-worthy borrowers.

The government will also consult on introducing a new, first-time buyer only ISA product that will provide a government bonus when a person uses it to buy a house, removing the need for a withdrawal charge and giving savers flexibility in case their circumstances change.

It will remain possible to open a Lifetime ISA until the new product becomes available and for account holders to continue to save into their Lifetime ISA in line with the existing rules indefinitely.

This sits alongside our work with the financial regulators to give mortgage lenders more flexibility, including on how they assess affordability, which means borrowers can now borrow 10% more than they could at the start of last year. Thanks to our work with the Bank of England, lenders also have more flexibility to offer larger loans. They estimate this could help as many as 36,000 more customers become first time buyers in the first year. Those looking to buy their first home should speak with a mortgage broker to learn more about what’s available to them.