Labour launches interest rates poster
The Chancellor Gordon Brown has launched Labour’s latest election poster, which is designed to emphasise the party’s stewardship of the economy.
Carrying the slogan “Interest rates halved with Labour”, the poster maintains that the Conservatives would put mortgages at risk.
Mr Brown highlighted that interest rates have averaged 5.2 per cent under Labour, which is half the average level under the Conservatives from 1979 to 1997.
Interest rates reached as high as 15 per cent under the Conservatives, he continued, and remained there for a whole year.
“Across the UK since 1997 home ownership has increased by one and half million and we have a record 18 million households now owning their own home,” he said.
By contrast he argued that the Conservative record led to negative equity, 250,000 home repossessions and “a legacy of serious housing shortages”.
Interest rates have been at their current level of 4.75 per cent for seven months, although there is speculation that they will have to rise in the near future.
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, which increases and decreases the rate of borrowing in the UK in an attempt to keep inflation as close as possible to its two per cent target, increased rates four times in 2004
Up until November 2003, the Bank had kept rates at a 48-year low of 3.5 per cent for four years.
