How not to control house prices

The right way to keep house prices at sensible levels:
  • Ensure that enough homes get built to meet reasonable local need, that it is not made ridiculously difficult to get planning permission for necessary developments and that the homes which are built are a decent match with the ones people want to live in.

The wrong way to keep house prices at sensible levels:
  • Give the Bank of England control over house prices.

Guess which one the Labour party want to try?
  • You guessed it!

The Labour leader and shadow chancellor are unreconstructed seventies "command economy" socialists who think the answer to every problem is government regulation.

We can all agree that there is a problem with a shortage of housing in some parts of the country and prices and rents which make it very difficult for the less advantaged and the young to get on the housing ladder.

This would not make it sensible, as Julian Harris points out in his article here on City AM,

"Labour's desire for the Bank of England to control UK house prices is disastrous and illogical,"


to try to give the job of setting house prices to the Bank of England.

As the head of the Bank, governor Mark Carney told a City audience back in 2014:

“The underlying dynamic of the housing market reflects a chronic shortage of housing supply, which the Bank of England can’t tackle directly.” 

He added: “We are not able to build a single house.”

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