Peterborough MP: Older residents 'hoarding assets' distorting property market and preventing younger people advancing

Stewart Jackson pointed to the difficulty faced by younger people in getting on to the property ladder as he urged the Government to facilitate the building of more homes.

The MP for Peterborough said more land needed to be released for house building as he took aim at the state of the housing market.

Speaking during a debate on intergenerational fairness, he said: “It’s absolutely right to point up the issue that older people, who are in any case better off, are hoarding capital assets and in the planning system in particular are preventing younger people from having what they had.

“When we are in a position where you have to be 37 years of age now and have something like £25,000 for a deposit, that cannot be right in distorting the system.

“We must build more homes and we must release more land and we must liberalise the planning system in order to address the specific issue of housing and intergenerational fairness.”

However, Mr Jackson insisted the issue of intergenerational fairness does not have to pitch younger people against older people and vice versa.

He said: “It doesn’t have to be an acrimonious debate, an adversarial debate, between the so-called millennials and the baby boomers because none of us can do anything about the societal change that’s inherent in this debate which is essentially demographic change.”