An end to the current mortgage tax relief system would be acceptable to the Labour party, if it was part of a national agreement on housing, party leader Job Cohen said on Monday evening.

‘We are prepared to talk. We must do something,’ the Volkskrant quotes Cohen as saying.
Cohen made the comment after meeting housing sector experts to discuss the current crisis. Prime minister Mark Rutte is ‘irresponsible’ to refuse to consider changes to the mortgage tax relief system, the Labour leader said.
Wilders
The minority VVD-CDA cabinet agreed last year it would not make any changes to mortgage tax relief. This was one of the conditions placed on the cabinet by Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam PVV in return for its support on the economy.
Earlier this month, the Dutch central bank warned that the current system is damaging the country’s financial stability. And an influential CDA academic urged party members to rethink the tax break, arguing that it encourages irresponsible lending.
The Dutch system is one of the most generous in Europe – home owners can fully deduct all the interest from tax for 30 years.