Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – in the House of Commons at on 16 October 2023.
Chi Onwurah
Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), Shadow Minister (Science, Research and Innovation)
What steps he is taking to support first-time buyers.
Rachel Maclean
The Minister of State, Home Department, Minister of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Government have a range of schemes available to first-time buyers, including First Homes and shared ownership. The mortgage guarantee scheme helps to increase the supply of 95% loan-to-value mortgages. We have also doubled the threshold at which stamp duty land tax becomes due to £250,000, and expanded first-time buyer relief.
Chi Onwurah
Shadow Minister (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), Shadow Minister (Science, Research and Innovation)
In West Fenham recently, Mr and Mrs Joyce told me how their daughter and prospective son in-law had lived with them for five years while they tried to realise their dream of home ownership. Even after saving a deposit, the failure of the Minister’s Government to build houses meant that they were constantly outbid on the few homes available. Labour has set out plans to get Britain building again. Will the Minister match our ambition, or is living with the in-Laws the new Tory dream?
Rachel Maclean
The Minister of State, Home Department, Minister of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The hon. Lady asks whether we will match Labour’s ambition. I have news for her: from what I picked up from the Labour party conference, it announced the same targets that we are getting on with. I draw her attention to the fact that more than 860,000 households have been helped to purchase a home since spring 2010, through Government-backed schemes including Help to Buy, Right to Buy and First Homes.
Anthony Browne
Conservative, South Cambridgeshire
I welcome the new “young” Minister to his post. I want to attach myself to tributes to his predecessor, my hon. Friend Dehenna Davison, who is sitting next to me.
Last week, a freedom of information request showed that the Lib Dem-Labour controlled Greater Cambridge Partnership, which handles city deal money in my Constituency, spent £4.7 million developing plans for a congestion charge that was then dropped because it was opposed basically by everyone. It also spent £16.5 million on the Cambridge South East Transport bus route, also now dropped, and £18 million on new car parks, none of which are actually open. That is a total so far of £160 million on transport projects, and virtually none of them functioning. It is now asking the Government for £200 million more. It is no wonder that in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire, people think that the Greater Cambridge Partnership is unelected, unaccountable and a waste of public money. Does the Minister agree that we have to ensure public value for money? Will he meet me to talk about the details?
Lindsay Hoyle
Speaker of the House of Commons, Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, House of Commons Commission, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, Chair, Speaker's Conference (2022) Committee, Chair, Speaker's Conference (2022) Committee, Chair, Restoration and Renewal Client Board Committee, Chair, Restoration and Renewal Client Board Committee
Order. That question is too long, and I am not quite sure how it fits in with first-time buyers.
Anthony Browne
Conservative, South Cambridgeshire
I will ask the Minister later.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
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