Beckett: Mortgage rescue needs to be looked at again

No matter how much people point out how few families the Government’s Mortgage Rescue Scheme has helped, until now the spokespeople have stuck fast to the line – ‘it was only ever meant for the most needy’.

That is despite Gordon Brown saying that it would help 6,000 families most at risk from repossession, when after nine months it has only helped a piddling 92.

But the Government’s defence was knocked today when Margaret Beckett, who launched the scheme when she was Housing Minister, admitted to Lobbydog that it may need reworking.

Having lost her job in the summer reshuffle she is not so constrained anymore, and when told that not a single person in her own Derby constituency – indeed across the whole county of Derbyshire had been helped, she gave way.

“I’m surprised at the results. Certainly it was always thought that not all the families that we would want to be on the scheme would be able to go on it,” she said.

“The idea was to try to prevent people from losing their homes if it was at all preventable.

“But I think that if this picture is being repeated across the country then the relevant people should look at it to see whether there’s a need to extend the help by some degree.”

It’s a flaccid admission, but an admission none-the-less, from the minister who launched MRS that the scheme has not worked.