Brexit has crowded out all other policy issues, it is said. This has become a convenient alibi for the government’s failure to solve a problem that is a unique threat to the well-being of the nation.

Brexit has crowded out all other policy issues, it is said. This has become a convenient alibi for the government’s failure to solve a problem that is a unique threat to the well-being of the nation. The issue is housing. Nothing else comes close to its impact on ordinary people. The present government is responsible; and the government before this one, and the government before that. It is both a Tory and a Labour failure.

All politicians say the right things in principle – that there are not enough houses to go round. They all say we need to build many more. But when they try to jerk the levers of power to get things moving, nothing much happens. It is as if the wires that connect a minister’s desk with the actual reality of house building have been cut. Saying and doing have become disconnected.

Houses do get built of course, but at a rate that is a small fraction of the number required. Some experts say we need 300,000 new homes a year, others that we need at least another million altogether, and yet the present rate is one of the lowest for decades. It is a measure of the exasperation of those who care for the quality of life and family well-being, that they are beginning to cast around for any solution that might help.

Thus, how about free-market forces? Could the animal spirits that drive competition and the pursuit of profit dynamite the logjam and get things moving at last? That was the proposal offered by Professor Philip Booth in remarks to a seminar at the House of Commons last week convened by Caritas Social Action Network. (I was in the chair, as it happens.)

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