Need for support for housing market

12.00.00am GMT Fri 4th Apr 2008

Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne said the sharp increase in the number of housing repossessions in South Hampshire was "horrifying" in a debate in the Commons today on the economy and the housing market.

Mr Huhne said that the rise in orders for repossessions was of "considerable concern" and the considerable problems that young families were facing trying to maintain their mortgage payments with the economy slowing down.

Debating with Mark Hoban, the Fareham MP, who was speaking for the Conservatives in a Lib Dem debate about the housing crisis, Mr Huhne said that he hoped Mr Hoban would "not be complacent about the considerable personal suffering involved in those horrifying figures".

Mr Huhne said later that more than 1,000 families lost their homes in South West Hampshire last year because of a growing "homes crisis" over mortgage payments and that he was now seeing a "heart-rending number of young people in surgery each week facing such problems".

Mr Huhne said that the figures showed clearly that there had been an alarming spurt in home repossessions in the fourth quarter of last year where the number in Southampton county court was up 24 per cent and in Winchester up 21 per cent.

"There is a real bite on local incomes and large numbers of people are now struggling to pay the high debts they took on in the good years" said Mr Huhne. "We must not go back to the years of Tory boom and bust when so many people lost their homes".

Mr Huhne voted for a motion in the commons that noted the risk of recession, the record levels of personal debt, and the extreme bubble in the housing market.

"We are pressing for the Government to ensure that lenders consider other measures than repossession, such as taking equity stakes in homes, so that young families are not pushed out on the street, their homes sold, and the fall in prices made even worse" said Mr Huhne.

"The Bank of England also needs to take account of the housing market when it sets interest rates".