Three quarters of us agree we have a housing crisis. In London, it is mentioned more often than Brexit as a national issue. The Budget made some moves in the right direction, but new money to encourage first-time buyers – which will put up prices, but not necessarily increase supply – has far exceeded extra funding for building affordable social housing.

The only time we have built houses at the volume we now need was pre-1980. The peak was 1967, when the state itself funded housebuilding directly.