Liz Truss left speechless on live TV when asked about Tories record on house building

Liz Truss is often not the most astute or intuitive Tory minister that regularly appears on our TV screens but even she would likely admit that she had a bit of a nightmare on Thursday.

Appearing on the Politics Live, Truss found herself literally speechless after she was asked by Andrew Neil how many houses the government had managed to build in the past five years.

In 2015, the David Cameron led Tories had pledged to build 200,000 starter homes across the UK. As of the start of November they had managed to build a grand total of zero.

Truss may or may not have been aware of this but when confronted with this statistic she appeared to be completely dumbfounded. Neil asked her:

You say you have a plan. You had a plan in 2014 to build 200,000 new starter homes. 

That was five years ago. How many did you build?

As already explained, the answer to that question is zero but Truss, who possibly knew the answer already (or at least she should have known), tried her best to avoid answering the question.

There haven't been as many starter homes as we would have liked. I don't have the exact numbers.

Neil then cuts her off with an absolute zinger.

It's easy to remember. It's zero.

Clips of Truss being left gobsmacked after this revelation have already become something of a viral hit.

The Tories initial pledge was that new homes could be sold exclusively to people under the age of 40 and was backed up by £2.3 billion being made available to ensure that the first 60,000 homes were delivered on time, which obviously didn't materialise.

As part of Labour's manifesto, the opposition party have vowed to build 150,000 affordable homes should they succeed in the general election.

HT Mirror

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