§ Mr. BayleyTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many households in(a) Great Britain, (b) the Yorkshire-Humberside region and (c) the York area have been helped under the scheme announced by him on 19 December 1991 to provide funding on concessional terms to help borrowers who are not on income support, but who face serious problems in paying their mortgages; and what means have been used to assess the effectiveness of the scheme.
§ Mr. NelsonI do not believe that it is possible to single out the specific effect of particular elements in the range of industry and Government measures which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced' following my meeting with the mortgage lenders—Official Report, 19 December 1991, column 453.
As for the number of households helped by the package as a whole, one indicator is the latest published figures for possession actions in the county courts in England and Wales which indicate a fall of 16,563–32 per cent.—in the: number of actions entered in the third quarter of 1992 compared with the third quarter of 1991. Over the same period possession actions entered in the Yorkshire and Humberside region fell by 1,428–38 per cent.; and in the York and Malton area by 33–22 per cent.