Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to increase home ownership and reform planning.
Speaking to delegates at the Labour conference in Liverpool yesterday, the Labour leader said: “We will set a new target: 70% home ownership and we will meet it with a new set of political choices. A Labour set of political choices.”
Home ownership is currently at around 65%. A rise to 70% would require getting hundreds of thousands more people onto the housing ladder. That meant “no more buy-to-let landlords or second-home owners getting in first,” Starmer said.
“We will back working people’s aspiration. Help real first-time buyers onto the ladder with a new mortgage guarantee scheme. Reform planning so speculators can’t stop communities getting shovels in the ground.”
The speech was light on detail or firm policy, but did offer a commitment to continue to invest in the built environment. “That’s what levelling-up really looks like,” Starmer said. “Practical Labour solutions, not empty Tory slogans.”
In a speech that also included a pledge to set up a state-owned energy company within a year of forming a government, Starmer added: “I’m not just pro-business, I want to partner with business. So we will scrap business rates, level the playing-field for start-ups and the high street.”
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