Andrew Neil grills Conservative secretary Liz Truss over Tory housing record

The secretary of state for trade was grilled by Andrew Neil over the number of social houses and starter homes built by the Conservatives as she attempted to criticise Labour's manifesto. Photo: BBC - Credit: Archant

The secretary of state for trade was grilled by Andrew Neil over the number of social houses and starter homes built by the Conservatives as she attempted to criticise Labour’s manifesto.

Speaking on BBC Two’s Politics Live, Liz Truss was hoping to take apart proposals made by Jeremy Corbyn in Labour’s new ‘manifesto for hope’, which includes the largest housing development project since the end of the Second World War.

However, Truss stumbled over her party’s figures and couldn’t state how many houses the Tory party had built.

Despite this Truss said the manifesto was a “complete fantasy”, and said “they’re not going to be able to do any of this [build 100,000 new council houses a year by 2024]”.

However, Andrew Neil said to Liz Truss: “In 2014 you promised to build 200,000 new starter homes. That was 5 years ago. How many did you build?”

Truss replied “I don’t have the figures,” before Andrew Neil said: “it’s an easy number to remember, zero, you built zero new starter homes.”

READ MORE: WATCH – The government is not to blame for poverty, says Priti Patel READ MORE: Labour ‘manifesto’ website was actually created by ToriesNeil also asked Truss how many houses were built in the last year, which Truss claimed was a “significant number,” however she “didn’t have the exact number”.

“You built 2,640 local authority homes even though there is a waiting list of about one million,” Neil said.

He continued: “You didn’t build 240,000 new homes, what you did was to create net additional dwellings of 240,000. We know there’s a huge shortage of housing, it’s one reason why house prices have risen so much ut you have only built 2,640 local authority homes in England.”