{"id":76699,"date":"2024-07-13T07:35:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-13T06:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=76699"},"modified":"2024-07-13T07:35:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T06:35:48","slug":"labour-could-deliver-fixed-rate-mortgages-for-the-life-of-a-loan%e2%80%8a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/07\/13\/labour-could-deliver-fixed-rate-mortgages-for-the-life-of-a-loan%e2%80%8a\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour could deliver fixed rate mortgages for the life of a loan\u200a"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have published this video this morning. In it, I argue that Labour could demand that every mortgage provider in the UK should have a fixed rate mortgage for the rest of a loan\u2019s life available to borrowers so that never again should people be caught out on the whim of the Bank of England. It would cost Labour nothing but it would provide certainty to millions of people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Labour could deliver fixed rate mortgages for the life of a loan\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/No5DP_3Odw4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this video is here:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Labour could deliver fixed rate mortgages for the life of a loan\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=jj98t-16684d4-pb&from=pb6admin&share=1&download=1&rtl=0&fonts=Arial&skin=c73a3a&font-color=auto&logo_link=episode_page&btn-skin=ff6d00\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The transcript is:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>I'm making a series of videos to explain how Labour, as a new government, could change some of the rules that apply in the UK to make life better for millions of people.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Let me suggest yet another way in which they could do this at no cost to themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>As we've seen over the last few years, variable interest rates on mortgages have caught millions of households out when it happened that interest rates were increased by the Bank of England through no fault of the borrowers of those funds who had taken out a mortgage to buy their own home.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>As a consequence, those people became pawns in the game of supposedly controlling inflation. We can argue elsewhere about whether that had any impact on controlling inflation, and I'll give you a little hint. I don't think it did. But what we can say with certainty is that this helped create the cost-of-living crisis that has caused misery for millions of UK households.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Now, why is it that in the UK we don't have what is available in the USA, which is a mortgage with a fixed interest rate for its entire life?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Labour could demand this from UK banks. It could make the offer of such a mortgage at a sensible interest rate a condition of the banking licence, which every bank must have as a condition of trading.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In other words, it can impose this requirement on every bank, building society or other company that provides mortgages in this country.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Straightforwardly, simply, it could say, you will make available a mortgage offer, which over a period of 25 years, 30 years, 40 years, or whatever the chosen mortgage term is, the interest rate will be fixed and so, therefore, will be the monthly repayment for life, so that a person or family taking out this obligation will know forever what they have to pay, and will never be caught out in the way that millions have been as a consequence of the unnecessary imposition of high interest rates by the Bank of England over recent years.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>It could do that because this will provide certainty to people in a way that very little else could with regard to their personal finances. Surely, Labour, you would want to deliver that. Come on, let's do it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have published this video this morning. In it, I argue that Labour could demand that every mortgage provider in the UK should have a<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/07\/13\/labour-could-deliver-fixed-rate-mortgages-for-the-life-of-a-loan%e2%80%8a\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,136,35,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking","category-city-of-london","category-economics","category-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76699"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76712,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76699\/revisions\/76712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}