Britain must build more homes warns Nationwide

I suspect that this might be the gravest supply-side threat for the British economy going forward. The issue is that we aren't building houses for a variety of reasons - planning legislation and the fact that large builders are sat on sizeable land banks, anticipating even bigger profits in future.

It is interesting that the industry itself should be calling for increased house building - but short of public sector building, it is difficult to see how the government can encourage this, unless it's prepared to relax planning restrictions, something that might cost it votes.