Rishi Sunak has doubled down on his insistence that his government is “on track” to halve inflation as he responded to Labour taunts that the Tory leader’s own backbenchers were warning of a “mortgage catastrophe”.
Sunak said “difficult and responsible decisions” had to be taken in light of the hardship faced by homeowners experiencing soaring interest rates. He sought to blame Britain’s situation on the “global macroeconomic situation” that had also caused rates to rise in the US, Canada and Australia.
Appearing at prime minister’s questions hours after figures showed that the UK’s annual inflation rate had unexpectedly remained unchanged in May at 8.7%, he said the IMF had strongly endorsed his government’s approach to cutting into that figure.
“Inflation is what erodes people’s savings and pushes up prices, and ultimately makes them poorer. This is why a long time before I had this job I highlighted the importance of tackling inflation. It’s why I said it is never easy to root out inflation, but we will take the difficult and responsible decisions to do so,” he said.
But the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, accused him of being out of touch with the fears of homeowners, who were now forecast to be facing extra mortgage repayments of £2,900 a year from a “Tory mortgage penalty”. The pain will increase if, as expected, the Bank of England increases the cost of borrowing on Thursday as part of efforts to tame inflation.
“Now he was warned by experts about this as long ago as autumn last year, but he either didn’t get it, didn’t believe it or didn’t care, because he certainly didn’t do anything, and when I raised this a couple of months ago, he had the gall to stand at that dispatch box and say he was delivering for homeowners,” said Starmer.
The Labour leader also kept up a strategy of focusing on the prime minister’s personal wealth, remarking: “I’m sure from the vantage point of his helicopter, everything might look fine.”
When Sunak referred again to the UK being in the same boat as the US, Canada and Australia when it came to rising interest rates, Starmer referred to property owned by the Sunak family in the US, saying: “I know he has a keen interest in mortgages in California.”
While the government is coming under pressure from its own backbenches to intervene for struggling mortgage-holders, there were no such announcements.
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But Sunak insisted mortgage-holders were being supported, telling the Commons: “We have deliberately and proactively increased the generosity of our support for the mortgage interest scheme. We have also established a new FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) … duty which will protect people with mortgages, for example, moving them on to interest-only mortgages or lengthening mortgage terms.
“We have spent tens of billions of pounds supporting people with the cost of living, particularly the most vulnerable.”