Housing

Housing Minister Mark Prisk's brave request for a grilling from Coffee House readers generated a very enthusiastic response. Here are the minister's answers to your questions. House Prices Q: What will the Government be doing to rebalance things back towards private buyers and away from the BTL speculators that have driven the market up to such an extent that private buyers are priced out? (Specifically, get the Treasury to end the tax breaks introduced under Labour that drive this, and level the playing field for ordinary buyers). A: It’s important not to overstate this problem.  In 2011, buy to let accounted for just 12 % of all mortgages.  And of course it’s important to have a ready supply of rented accommodation for people who want or need that flexibility.

I don’t like to think that I am rich. In theory, I know that in comparison to the vast majority of the world’s population, I am. But perhaps because of my politics, or perhaps because of journalists’ perennial pretence that we are tribunes of the people, I cannot see myself as wealthy, and would protest if others said that was just what I was. And in everyday dealings with others, I don’t feel as if I’m rich. I don’t have a car. My wife and I watch what we spend at the shops. I wish I could wine and dine every night, but, alas, I cannot. So I go on thinking that I am an ordinary member of the British middle class, until I start talking to people who are 25 years younger than me. I have learned to be careful about what I say.

Planning Minister Nick Boles admitted yesterday that he did not believe his controversial suggestion for Britain to build homes on two million acres of countryside should be put into practice. The new minister caused a storm last month when he supported a 3 per cent increase in UK-wide development to alleviate the housing shortages caused by high immigration. The plan was to build homes on green-field land, increasing development from 9 per cent to 12 per cent nationwide. But yesterday, Boles denied the claims, arguing that they were meant to illustrate a wider point about under-development rather than create a particular policy or target.

Mark Prisk took over as housing minister in September's reshuffle, and has quite a task on his hands to get housebuilding figures looking healthy again. The Conservative MP was previously in the Business department as Construction Minister, so he knows all about the challenges of getting Britain building. He has bravely put himself up for a grilling by Coffee House readers, and will be answering a selection of your questions posted in the comments below. Please post your questions below by 5pm Friday 16 November, and we will post Prisk's answers next week.

We are now closer to the 2015 election than the 2010 one. We also expected by now to have the coalition’s mid-term review, the document that will set out its priorities for the second half of its term in office. But its publication has now been delayed until January. This is because the debates about what new policies to include in it are still going on. The quad—David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander—met on November 1st to discuss various ideas for it. They were, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, joined by Oliver Letwin and David Laws for this meeting with the Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood also present. Dominating the meeting was ‘earn or learn’.

Treasury Questions was a little quieter than usual today: George Osborne is away and so Ed Balls left the questions to his colleague Chris Leslie. The Shadow Chancellor didn't say entirely quiet, though, gradually turning a warm shade of pink as he barracked away while perched on the opposition front bench. Labour landed very few blows today: Rachel Reeves continued the attack on the EU budget, Leslie tried rather ineffectually to talk about borrowing, and backbenchers made a few grumbles. The two really interesting questions came from the coalition benches: and more specifically, from two sacked ministers.

Now that the Tories have at least agreed within their own party that they can find £10 billion of further cuts to the welfare budget, they are starting to ramp up the rhetoric on why it's fair to do this, and how they can achieve it. Yesterday, Chancellor George Osborne said this: 'Where is the fairness, we ask, for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits? When we say we're all in this together, we speak for that worker. We speak all those who want to work hard and get on.' Today, David Cameron described the sort of person that he thinks the Conservatives don't speak for as he fleshed out some of his thoughts on where the next round of welfare cuts might fall.

This morning's big housebuilding announcement was aimed at unblocking obstacles in the planning system to get development of new homes and extensions going. But it hasn't unblocked tensions within the government. The main controversy is over whether to relax the quotas for affordable housing within each new development, and The Times reports that Nick Clegg and Eric Pickles were at loggerheads with George Osborne over the idea. This morning, Downing Street announced that developers can bypass a council's affordable housing requirements if they feel they make a site commercially unviable. The claim is that this will release 75,000 new homes currently stuck behind this barrier.

Today’s publication of the Montague Review into institutional investment in build-to-let addresses an important gap in our housing market. Large numbers of people, and a growing number of families, who would have bought homes in the past are now shut out of ownership for the medium to long term. Dominated by buy-to-let landlords, the private rented sector currently offers them variable quality and limited security at a high price. These working families represent a new form of housing need but they risk being overlooked if the Review’s recommendations get caught up in a conflict between affordable housing (or social housing as it used to be called) and the private rented sector.

You’d think the American sub-prime crisis would have taught politicians the world over not to try to rig the housing market. But no, David Cameron is back on it today — about how to ‘unblock’ the system so the debt geyser starts to gush again. ‘The problem today is that you have lenders who aren’t lending, so builders can’t build and buyers can’t buy,’ says the Prime Minister. ‘It needs the government to step in, and help unblock the market.’ The idea that lenders may not lend because they feel the housing market may fall, and people may be unable to repay, is instantly dismissed. He speaks as if debt is the solution, and unavailability of debt is a self-evident problem.