A debate on UK housing is conducted in bad faith

There is a formula for generating policies to solve Britain's housing crisis. First, always phrase the policy in the same dreary way. So "Right to Buy", "Help to Buy", "Rent to Own" and "Help to Rent" have slouched out of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat camps. Second, symptoms must be addressed rather than causes. Spending money on helping buyers is allowed; radical changes to the planning system less so. Third, broadcast an ambitious target to build thousands more houses than the norm, without coming clean about how to achieve it.

Cynicism is excusable in UK housing policy. Expensive accommodation raises living costs, chokes off the growth of Britain's most entrepreneurial cities and widens wealth inequality. Yet the solutions consistently fail to match up to the challenge.

The Conservatives prefer to focus on subsidising people to buy existing homes. The Help to Buy mortgage guarantee and the proposed extension of Right to Buy into social housing each strain the exchequer. Individual buyers may prove lucky, but in aggregate these squandered billions only help the already housed. Taking most family homes out of inheritance tax would merely extend this benefit to the next generation.

Nor are Labour innocent of such sins. Sellers stand to gain most from scrapping stamp duty for first-time buyers. Three-year tenancy agreements that limit rent increases to inflation are redolent of the self-defeating market interference that the UK eschewed several decades ago. Their proposal might even cause rents to rise when contracts are renegotiated. Tenants could end up paying more in return for slightly greater security of tenure.

More than 10 years ago, the economist Kate Barker was asked to investigate why the UK failed to build enough homes. Since then, the financial crisis saw house building plummet to postwar lows, from which it has not recovered to any great degree. House prices have kept barrelling higher; per square metre, only those in Monaco are more expensive.

Economists, including Ms Barker, largely pin the blame on a planning system described as "extraordinarily rigid". This rigidity strengthens the hand of existing homeowners, an interest group that terrifies politicians far more than those left without adequate housing. Proposals to loosen the rules are howled down. Anyone who suggests tampering with the green belts that enfold major cities stands accused of environmental vandalism. Other suggestions, such as land auctions to nudge councillors towards letting through development, have been quietly throttled.

Instead, the electorate is fobbed off with unspecified "garden cities" and more building on brownfield land as the answer. Both ignore market signals, and would therefore fail. Prices are high where people currently live, indicating that this is where they want more housing. Old industrial sites or new towns do not fill the need. The farmland around current towns and cities would do the job far better.

Britain's housing problem will only be addressed when a government summons the courage to admit that building should be allowed on some of its abundant green spaces. Looked at from space, or through the windows of an intercity train, Britain is still the "green and pleasant land" immortalised by the poet William Blake. Only 10 per cent of England is classified as urban, and even this is not all concrete. Its cities are full of parks, gardens, allotments and lakes. That it also feels cramped and expensive to live in is a purely self-inflicted wound.

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