Nice idea this...a pre-election 'manifesto' from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), an industry body, clearly intended to influence political party policies in their respective election manifestos. Housing, I am sure is going to be a key aspect of debate at the next election.
The link to the PDF download can be found here:
http://cml.org.uk/cml/filegrab/6319-cml-manifesto-a4-04-low-res.pdf?ref=9072
However, in my rummage to locate this I also found a similar named document that the CML produced some ten years ago and it is interesting in it's own right. It contains 100 pages of history of the lending market wrapped up within it for example...just in case you like that sort of thing, that search link is here:
Returning to the current manifesto, at 14 pages is far more digestible and the attempt to address the divergent interests of different people in the housing market makes a lot of sense...the young, the old and the 'inbetweeners' (no, not Simon and his pals!).
Buy-to-let gets addressed as you might expect but the overall message seems to be one of: 'please don't throw the baby out with the bath water', when looking at new housing policies. A holistic, end-to-end view is put forward and the term 'unintended consequences' is mentioned a couple of times...hinting at doing more than what is considered populist or 'vote-pimping' (my own phrase) and instead to look wider and deeper than perhaps has been done in the recent past.
Reforms are called for within the document, such as to stamp duty, shared ownership and retirement lending options, as well as calling for the Government's own reforms, such as to welfare and financial regulation, to be more consistent with the market's needs. This perhaps points at Universal Credit and the Mortgage Market Review as examples of a less than favourable view from the CML.
This idea of a manifesto makes sense to me and a similar approach from other industry stakeholders, such as letting agents and landlord associations could be a good idea too...the more informed we are (and by 'we' I mean the voting public), the better chance we have of deciding on the issues rather than merely on the hype and spin...well we can at least hope...
Source: cml