Michelle Donelan was recently selected to contest Wentworth and Dearne, where she is standing against the Housing Minister, John Healey. You can donate to her campaign here.
I am the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Wentworth and Dearne, and I want to be the voice of hard-working people of this constituency who have strived, saved and sacrificed to own their homes. I want to encourage and enable others to do the same.
Last month the incumbent Labour MP, John Healey - Gordon Brown’s Housing Minister - remarked that for some people it can be “the best option for them to allow their home to be repossessed.”
Since then, I have been speaking to constituents who have been disillusioned by Mr Healey’s insensitive comments. There is a clear consensus that the statement made was callous and thoughtless, given that last year 46,000 repossessions took place - the highest level for fifteen years. Over the same year, however, we paid Mr Healey’s mortgage interest bill on his second home in London.
Under thirteen years of this deceitful New Labour government, Gordon Brown’s tax hikes have ensured the property ladder remains out of reach for an entire generation. We need to give everyone a fair start, a chance and the opportunity to get a stake in their local communities.
To empower the people of Wentworth and Dearne, I will fight to restore the sense of pride that residents have for the area. I want to encourage home ownership and support Conservative plans to scrap Stamp Duty for first-time buyers on homes up to £250,000. This way, nine out of ten new homeowners will pay nothing. We also need to abolish Home Information Packs, which have made moving house a costly bureaucratic nightmare.
Whereas Labour have curtailed the right of social tenants to own their homes, we need to open up the housing market to the many, not just the few, by making it easier for social tenants to own or part-own their property.
An Englishman’s home is his castle and to lose it is devastating. Unfortunately, Mr. Healey’s willingness to embrace repossession highlights New Labour’s tendency to avoid the underlying problems. We need to encourage people not only to invest responsibly in their own future, but in the future of their towns and villages, simply by making it easier to get on to the property ladder and helping them to stay on it.