Owen Smith - taking YPP ideas and watering them down to meaningless.

From the BBC:

[Owen] Smith has called for the current funding system to be abolished and replaced with a 1%-2% graduate tax. He also promised a high-level apprenticeship to every 18-year-old who gets the grades…

He also promised to build 50,000 "first homes" a year, earmarked for under-30s, which would be rented to first-time buyers at 80% of the local market rent, with the remaining 20% going into a savings pot.

Student loans are currently repaid via a 9% graduate tax, and even that is only enough to repay about half the loans. Reducing that to 1% or 2% is of course much better, but does not explain where the rest of the money will come from.

We summarised the amounts involved and the obvious way forward in our higher education manifesto.

He also promised to build 50,000 "first homes" a year, earmarked for under-30s, which would be rented to first-time buyers at 80% of the local market rent, with the remaining 20% going into a savings pot.

Aargh! That doesn't even make sense; are tenants supposed to pay 100% of the 'market rent' and be given 20% of it back somehow? It's nowhere near enough either. If everybody is to have a chance of obtaining such a home, they would need to build about 300,000 a year, not just 50,000, which wouldn't even show up as a blip.

YPP housing/planning manifesto here.