Plan to give public land to developers and pay for homes with receipts from council house sales

Prime minister David Cameron yesterday launched an expansion of the Conservative party鈥檚 Right to Buy programme in order to generate funds to build 200,000 new homes.

In an interview to mark the start of the Party鈥檚 annual conference in Manchester, Cameron said he would increase the discount available to council tenants to buy their own homes, and use the money from the sale of the homes to build new houses.

Government departments will also be forced to hand over land to developers, as part of a housing strategy to be unveiled in the autumn.

Cameron told the Andrew Marr show yesterday that: 鈥淭he housing market isn鈥檛 working. Why isn鈥檛 working? Because of the debt crisis, the banks are bunged up with debt, so the banks aren鈥檛 lending, the builders aren鈥檛 building and the buyers can鈥檛 buy because they can鈥檛 get the mortgages that they need.

鈥淪o this government isn鈥檛 just sitting back, we are rolling up our sleeves and saying right, we鈥檙e going to make over government land to house-builders on the basis that they can build now and pay for the land when they sell the homes.

鈥淭hat could build 100,000 homes, 200,000 jobs in our economy. We鈥檙e not stopping there, we鈥檙e saying let鈥檚 bring back the right to buy your council house, with proper discounts that Labour got rid of, and let鈥檚 use that money, as people choose to buy their council home, let鈥檚 use that money to build homes for rent, for low rents for families that are currently stuck on housing lists.鈥�

The Right to Buy initiative was introduced by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher in 1980, resulting in the sell-off of hundreds of thousands of homes in the last thirty years. However, the receipts from sales were not kept to be invested in new homes.

Cameron was responding to critics, including the chair of the Treasury select committee, Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, who say that the Coalition government lacks a credible plan for growth.

The Labour party responded to Cameron鈥檚 announcement by saying that the economy was 鈥渇latlining鈥� thanks to his policies and he had run out of ideas.

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