“The housing minister, Gavin Barwell, has suggested that parents should leave their houses and savings to their grandchildren rather than their children to help them get on the housing ladder.
Barwell made the call for pensioners to skip a generation when writing their wills as he revealed that his 75-year-old mother had chosen to leave her £700,000 house in Croydon to her five grandchildren rather than himself and his brother.
The MP for Croydon Central, who owns a £750,000 house three miles from his mother’s, said the decision could help to reduce intergenerational financial inequities. “Generally in life we all like to think that our children are going to be better off than us. In terms of new technology and life expectancy, they are going to be,” he told a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham last week.
“But at the moment, as things stand, they are less likely to own their own home and we need to do something about that.”
However, Barwell added that he did not want to live in a country where it was necessary to have a wealthy grandparent simply to get on to to the housing ladder, the Telegraph reported.”
East Devon Watch 