The Green Party has pledged to build 500,000 social rented homes by 2020.

The Party plans to increase the social housing budget from £1.5bn per year to £6bn by 2017. It will reform landlord tax allowances to incentivise good practice rather than profits, and scrap buy-to-let mortgage interest relief. It will also remove the borrowing caps from local councils.

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Natalie Bennett, Green Party Leader, said: "We need to move away from regarding houses as primarily financial assets and go back to regarding them as homes. This policy is an important step in that direction.

"Landlords have been receiving massive public subsidies through tax breaks and housing benefits, and this is contributing to the rising, unsustainable level of inequality in our society.

"They do not deliver enough of social and economic benefit to the rest of society to justify their favourable tax treatment: it isn't in the interests of our common good to continue this bias towards the wealthy at the cost of those struggling to survive with high rents and often low-quality housing."

(CD/IT)