Home Ownership: First-Time Buyers

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord is quite right to say that, where people are not able to buy their own homes, this can lead to problems later on where people on fixed incomes later in life are on rapidly increasing rent. So it is very important that we try to encourage as many young people as possible who are able to buy property to carry on doing so. On his point about the long-term housing strategy, it is on its way. We said we would publish in the spring, and spring is not quite over yet. I hope we will be able to deliver it very soon.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that a strong mix across all tenures creates a healthy market for first-time buyers? Does she therefore share our disappointment on these Benches that fewer than 15,000 social rent completions were achieved last year? Does she accept that that leads to first-time buyers having to achieve an almost impossible deposit of over £60,000, and that they will continue to be squeezed out of the market until the mix of tenures is much healthier?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I hope I set out in my earlier answer the importance we place on the mix of tenures. The £39 billion programme to increase the provision of social and affordable homes is designed to do exactly that. We are taking measures, particularly confidence measures for consumers, to help some of our young people to understand this. Probably two generations now have been told that house buying is out of reach, so, when I work with the financial institutions, which we have been talking to very closely, we are keen that they promote better some of the mortgage options that are available.