Downing Street has rejected the housing minister’s suggestion that parents should leave their property and savings to their grandchildren rather than their children to help them get on the housing ladder. But Theresa May’s deputy spokesman said the senior Conservative had been speaking in a personal capacity when he made the remarks at a fringe event at the party conference last week. “These were personal comments made by Gavin Barwell at a fringe meeting at conference and they are certainly not policy. In terms of new technology and life expectancy, they are going to be,” he told a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham last week. In her speech to the party conference on Wednesday, the prime minister described the UK’s housing market as dysfunctional and said the “power of government” was needed to repair it.

Source: The Guardian October 10, 2016 13:59 UTC