‘Tough decisions’ on housing are needed but are bound to upset someone, somewhere - Bill Carmichael

On the one hand it is tasked with preserving the green and pleasant spaces that we all value. But on the other it must provide sufficient houses, shops, offices, roads and factories to cater for a growing population.

Those things are constantly in conflict and there are no easy answers. But it is clear that over recent years we have got things badly wrong.

To put it simply we have dismally failed to provide sufficient high quality housing to cope with demand.

As anyone who has studied the basics of economics will know, when demand continues to increase, and supply is restricted, the inevitable result is a rise in prices, in this case of housing, which currently is at unsustainably high levels.

Take my experience as an example. When I was that poorly paid cub reporter working on a local newspaper, I was still able to scrape together a sufficient deposit to put a foot on the housing ladder. And my first house - a tiny place with rotting window frames, ancient wiring, leaking plumbing and an outbreak of mould in the bathroom - cost me approximately twice my annual salary.

I thought that was tough, and sometimes the monthly mortgage payment drained my current account, but young people today will tell you I had it easy.

Buying a house for twice your salary today? Fat chance. Young people today would have to pay three or four times their annual salary, plus of course a hefty deposit, to buy their first starter home.

And unless they have wealthy parents prepared to subsidise their purchase, many simply cannot afford it.

Instead, what we have become accustomed to call “generation rent” has to pay a huge proportion of their salary simply on living costs with no hope of building up savings or real estate assets for the future. As a result the current rental market is completely crazy. For example, one of my children pays more per month in rent for a tiny room in a terraced house, with shared kitchen and bathroom, than I pay in mortgage payments for an entire five-bedroom house.

Besides the unfairness and difficulties this causes many younger people it also has wider implications for society.

The idea of a “property owning democracy”, first expounded by the Conservative MP Noel Skelton in 1923, was a way of reducing economic inequality and was designed to distribute power and wealth more equitably among the population.

Home ownership was seen as a good thing and was also thought to promote stability because it gave people a real stake in society. That was the idea behind Baroness Thatcher’s sale of council houses to tenants in the 1980s - a policy which my own parents benefited from when they bought their terraced house in Liverpool after many decades of paying rent.

It is a pity that the current Conservative government lacks such insight and conviction. To be fair the Secretary of State for Housing, Michael Gove, did propose some radical planning reforms to make house building easier. But following a rebellion by Conservative MPs representing the leafy shires, these proposals were delayed and watered down.

Sir Keir Starmer and Labour meanwhile are doing a classic bit of fence sitting. The Labour leader made some bold claims this week that Labour would allow houses to be built on the green belt, adding that he was prepared to take “tough decisions” and “back the builders, not the blockers”.

But he then hedged his bets by adding that building would only take place where it does not “affect the beauty of our countryside”.

It is the characteristic Nimby response - I am in favour of house building in principle, but not in my backyard. As I said there are no easy answers, but if we want to build more houses that is likely to take place on a cherished piece of green space where somebody walks their dog and takes their children for a kickabout on Saturday mornings.

The “tough decisions” Sir Keir talks about will inevitably upset someone, somewhere.