The Daily Mail has appeared to refuse to back down after being accused of sensationalising comments made by the Financial Conduct Authority’s head of mortgages.
The paper reported that Lynda Blackwell told The Great Mortgage Debate, held in central London last Thursday, that older people who “sit quite happily in a very big house” should be encouraged to downsize to free up the market.
The FCA was subsequently forced to insist it does not have policy of wanting older home owners to move out of larger properties.
And Peter Williams, executive director of the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA), which hosted the debate, said: “We are greatly concerned about misleading reports of comments from our Great Mortgage Debate, which were in the context of a broad discussion about the UK’s housing supply issue and the need for a joined-up strategy across all ages and tenures.
“The aim was to raise important questions that must be considered about the types of support needed at both ends of the property ladder, including schemes like rent-to-buy and options for ‘last-time buyers’ – that is, people who want to think about downsizing in later life but who are often put off by a lack of suitable properties and the costs involved.
“It is vital these questions are addressed in the round, so that – as well as building more homes – the UK builds the right kind of homes to support the whole population.
“(The) Daily Mail report both trivialised and sensationalised comments made by members of the panel and that is regrettable.
“Public debate about housing issues is important and the Daily Mail should aim to contribute to that rather more constructively than by running scare stories and offering misleading reports of what was said.”
Since the statement was issued the Daily Mail appears not to have budged.
This week it printed a long letter headlined “It’s a disgrace to tell pensioners to move house”, and also a first person piece by Amanda Platell, who called Blackwell’s comments an “appalling indignity” for older people, saying “purpose built battery farms for the elderly” would “set generation against generation”.
Platell said the FCA, and Blackwell’s, comments were “nothing less than another insidious assault on the elderly. One which again suggests they’re a burden, that their time is over”.
- Update October 27: Since reporting on this story, we understand that the Mail has taken steps to remedy the matter which is now resolved.
It important to give Mr Wilson CEO of Legal and General full and proper credit for this plan for generational cleansing of aspirational property.
It seems to me this new generation of rising executives haven’t worked out that nice and large properties they crave are constantly coming on the market, trouble is they are being sold to people who have worked harder and have more money than them, in exactly the same way as they sold to incumbent owners a generation or 2 ago.
That is the system; work harder, work smarter, move somewhere cheaper or put up with it. Whatever Mr Wilson and his merry band of social engineers do they need to get their head around the fact that the world and society owes them nothing.
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