Amber Rudd is Conservative MP for Hastings and Rye. Her article is the sixth in a seven part series of articles by Conservative MPs, each discussing the Coalition's policies to get more people into good homes.
There are only so many ways to move taxes and to rein back on regulation. Economists and politicians can debate whether low or high taxes, and more or less investment, will more effectively reduce the deficit and stimulate growth, but the truth is that these limited levers are also a game of chance, particularly at a time when the euro-zone crisis rages around us. There are so many different variables buffeting each nation's economy that there is no certainty in particular moves.
So government needs to be smart. We need to be bold and innovative. We need to find ways to stimulate the economy through clever ideas, that don't bring a bill to the door of the tax payer.
The newly announced "Buy now, Pay later" policy from the government is one such idea.
Under this scheme, land that is owned and unused by the state can be released to building companies and payment only takes place after the houses have been built and sold.
Housing is an area where we need to stimulate construction not just to boost the economy (it accounts for 3% of GDP) with job creation but also quite simply because we need more houses, or more accurately more homes. It is completely unacceptable that so few houses were built under Labour, and already reforms in this area are seeing house construction starts 24% up on an equivalent period under Labour. Part of the solution is de-regulation and the government is, controversially, addressing that through planning reforms. But this new "Buy now, Pay later" scheme addresses the commercial side of house building. It is a way of effectively adding liquidity to a market that seized up under the last government.
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