Treasury chief secretary calls for fewer home repossessions
Sunday, 19 October 2008 12:00 AM
Treasury chief secretary Yvette Cooper has called for a halt in repossessions of properties by banks in the instance of default by mortgage holders.
Speaking to the Observer, Ms Cooper stressed that eviction from properties should only take place in the last resort and urged banks to make things easier for customers in the current economic climate.
She told the paper: "We need a more responsible approach to repossessions. What we are looking at is something looking much more widely at all of the banks, because I think repossession needs to be lot rarer.
"We need to do everything that we can to keep people in their own homes," she added.
In the interview, Ms Cooper also admitted that a slowdown in the UK economy was inevitable and said measures needed to be taken to ease the blow of the economic problems on the people.
"It's clearly going to be tougher times ahead. I don't think any government can prevent economic slowdown, faced with the kind of global problems that we have had
"What we can do is step in and, by dealing with the problems in the banking system, prevent the worst of the credit squeeze hitting people," she added.
The government purchased large stakes in three banks last week as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS accepted public funding as part of the governments £37 billion bailout plan.
There have been renewed concerns about the economy after official figures showed a 0.5 per cent jump in the rate of unemployment from the previous quarter as 164,000 people lost their jobs.
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