Hammond vows construction of more UK homes
Britain’s finance minister, Philip Hammond, promises to speed up house building in his new budget plan this week and says he has some room to help voters despite his tight squeeze on the public finances, the Sunday Times newspaper reports.
Hammond, who is under pressure to help a weakened Prime Minister Theresa May with his tax and spending plans even as the economy slows after 2016’s Brexit vote, said he would target the construction of 300,000 homes a year.
May has said she wants to help younger voters, many of whom fear they will not achieve the living standards of their parents’ generation.
Hammond said he would do “whatever it takes”, including new powers and planning rules, to get builders building and pledged that “the next generation will have the same opportunities as their parents to own a home”.
Last week, the government said the number of new homes in Britain rose to 217,350 in 2016, the highest in nearly a decade but a long way below levels in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Sunday Times also said Hammond had suggested he would boost spending for Britain’s health service and further ease a squeeze on the pay of public sector workers in his budget plan on Wednesday.
But Hammond said he had to “signal a continued commitment to fiscal responsibility”, suggesting he would stick to his targets for cutting the budget deficit.
“We are heavily constrained fiscally. We don’t have huge amounts of room for manoeuvre. But we do have some room,” he said.
Many economists said Hammond would struggle to meet his target of eliminating Britain’s budget deficit by the mid-2020s because of the country’s stubborn productivity problem.
Britain’s official budget forecasters have said they expect to cut their productivity growth forecasts, suggesting slower growth ahead.