From This is Money:
The Treasury announced a one-year stamp duty holiday on houses worth up to £175,000. It will save buyers up to £1,750.
There will also be interest-free loans for first-time buyers on low incomes, help for those facing repossession and more money for social housing.
Downing Street called it a modest but essential package of help for those at the sharp end of the credit crunch.
But the emergency scheme, worth a total of £1.6bn, was dismissed by experts as ‘a drop in the ocean’ and a ‘political sticking plaster’.
They pointed to a stark assessment from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that Britain was now in recession for the first time since the Tories were in power.
Even more embarrassingly for Mr Brown, it said Britain was the sole major G7 economy facing imminent recession, although France and Germany are expected to grow only marginally this year.
The assessment severely undermines the Premier’s claims that the UK is well-plac…
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