LABOUR Party MP Owen Smith pledged new powers for councils to tackle the housing crisis as he urged Oxford members to back his leadership challenge.

Mr Smith told a standing-room only crowd at Wesley Memorial Church that he was the only man who could return the party to government.

The Pontypridd MP said there was no need for the party to sacrifice its principles for power and criticised successive leaderships for not doing enough to defend Labour's record in government.

Mr Smith, who was introduced by Oxford East MP Andrew Smith and former Oxford West and Abingdon parliamentary candidate Sally Copley, promised he would deliver a £200bn "British new deal."

Funded by borrowing, it would see huge investment in schools, roads and railways.

Before his speech Luke Sproule quizzed the man who wants to be our next Prime Minister on his plans on housing and railways and how he can beat Jeremy Corbyn.

Q- How would you tackle the housing crisis?

"We should let our councils to borrow in order to build in their local areas where they know the level of local housing need.

"They are the people who can tell us where we should be building and they also have the knowledge about what is likely to be acceptable to the local community in terms of building.

"If we did that we would drive up supply in the market and we would therefore drive down prices.

"We should be offering the best incentives centrally to facilitate building on brownfield sites.

"For example one of the ideas I have got is about a British housing commission.

"One of the roles of that could be to give it the statutory powers of a local council to purchase land, compulsory purchase land even, and they could be charged with purchasing large tracts of brownfield site across this country."

Q- What would you do to address rising rail fares?

"I definitely think we should renationalise the railways.

"Fares have doubled versus prices and versus wages just since the Tories came in in 2010.

"We would have a British new deal borrowing £200bn.

"It would be for infrastructure and part of it should be for building new railways in this country.

"I keep saying to people it is not a question of whether we can afford this- can we afford to continue to leave our railways crumbling?

"If Isambard Kingdom Brunel turned up in Oxford he would recognise most of the railways because he built them."

Q- How do you hope to convince Jeremy Corbyn supporters to vote for you instead?

"I understand why people voted for him, they are idealistic about wanting Britain to be a more fair, equal place.

"They want the Labour party to be a social movement that is genuinely transformative.

"They want us once more to be seen for a catalyst for change in their communities and across Britain and they want Britain to be a fairer, more equal place.

"I want all of those things as well.

"The only difference between us is that I see more clearly than Jeremy that in order to get all that we have to get into power.

Owen Smith biography

Owen Smith was born in Morecambe in Lancashire and was brought up in Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.

He joined the Labour Party at 16 and went to the University of Sussex before going on to work for the BBC.

He then worked in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals industry for five years, including for Pfizer.

In 2002 he moved into politics as a special adviser for Paul Murphy who was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.