MP fears 'sleepless nights' for Wigan home-owners as mortgage rates rise

Families in the North West face paying an extra £374 per month, according to new analysis by Labour.

Leader Sir Keir Starmer called it a “crisis made in Downing Street but paid for by working people” as he renewed his calls for Prime Minister Liz Truss to reverse the “kamikaze budget” that has “crashed the economy” and seen interest rates and borrowing costs rise.

Despite the Government’s 45p income tax rate climbdown, Labour fear mortgage rates are still likely to reach five or even six per cent.

They say an average buyer in the North West taking out a two-year fixed mortgage in the third quarter of 2020 faced an interest rate of about 1.6 per cent and monthly repayments of £794. Should interest rates reach five per cent, those repayments would increase to £1,076, an increase of £282.

Makerfield MP Yvonne Fovargue said: “Families across our borough deserve so much better than this Tory-made crisis.

“These eye-watering mortgage increases will cause home-owners across Wigan sleepless nights – and the Tory Government is entirely to blame.

“There is an alternative. At our party conference Labour announced a comprehensive plan to target a home ownership rate of 70 per cent and 1.5 million new home-owners.

“We set out proposals to build more houses, raise stamp duty on foreign buyers to stop them buying whole developments off-plan, and give first-time buyers first dibs on newly built homes.

“The burden of the Tories’ fantasy economics should not fall on working people.”