COMMUNITIES Secretary James Brokenshire’s proposals for young people to raid their pensions in order to buy their homes was slammed by pensions and housing experts today.

Mr Brokenshire claimed today that changing the rules would “empower” first-time buyers to get on the property ladder and called on the next prime minister to reform pensions to allow young people to “make the choice for themselves.”

People’s Pension director of policy Gregg McClymont said Mr Brokenshire’s proposals was likely to push up house prices and leave young people worse off in the future.

“Introducing a policy of robbing Peter to pay Paul will not make housing any more affordable,” the former shadow pensions minister said.

“Pensions are about providing much-needed incomes for people in retirement, and all the international evidence points in one direction: pension pots accessed for housing or other reasons during a working life are never adequately replenished, ensuring people will be left worse off.”

Mr McClymont said the answer to the housing shortage was building more affordable housing, not diminishing people’s pensions.

Priced Out director of housing campaigns Reuben Young said that young people and aspiring first-time buyers should not have to choose between housing security and retirement security. He said that simply allowing people to spend more money on the same scarce number of homes is not a solution.

He told the Star: “This is just one more terrible and destructive demand-side policy that will only increase house prices further, just like the awful help-to-buy scheme.

“This idea wouldn’t just make homes more unaffordable, it would also make the economy depend even more on continuously rising prices because if — heaven forbid — prices fall and housing becomes cheaper, then buyers who have taken advantage of this ‘opportunity’ would lose considerable money in their retirement.

“Government needs to liberalise planning, build more social housing and reform property taxes so that housing costs fall.”

National Housing Federation head of policy James Prestwich said the housing crisis won’t end without major government investment in new affordable homes.

“Ultimately, while this proposal could help some buyers, it won’t solve the housing crisis on its own,” he told the Star.

“The country desperately needs 90,000 new social homes every year — however, last year, only 6,500 were built, largely thanks to a lack of government investment over the past decade.”

Last month Mr Brokenshire was accused of being out of touch with the housing crisis after a photoshoot in his kitchen showed he had four ovens.