PMQs - Clegg warns on repossession levels and housing crash preparations

3.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 26th Mar 2008

Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg focused on the economy at Prime Minister's Questions today, calling on Gordon Brown to take action to prevent banks repossessing homes "at will". He said the situation was as bad as under the Tories in the first two years of the 1990s. Speaking after PMQs he accused the Prime Minister of being "both complacent and disingenuous in his response to the very real concerns that the housing market is now facing".

Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg said "The Government's own figures show that in 2007 over 95,000 orders to repossess properties were made which is only fractionally less than the 103,000 made in 1990 at the start of the last housing crash. Meanwhile, house prices in the first three months of this downturn fell by 3%, more than the 2% fall seen at the start of the last housing crash. The fact is we are on the cusp of what could be a major housing crash and rather than making serious preparations the Prime Minister has more interest in bandying around misleading statistics."