'With new house building at a post-war low – with just 134,000 new homes built in the UK in 2010 according to Government figures – the housing charity Shelter last week said stagnant incomes had forced families with children to cut down on buying food to pay for rocketing rent increases.'

Yes, Richard but Labour's laissez-faire approach to planning (particularly where I live) led to thousands of 'luxury' houses and flats being built - rather than the badly needed social housing that the last two governments of 'free market advocating socialists' should have been building! There's supposed to be a shortage of housing, but a forest of 'For Sale' and 'To Let' signs everywhere I look. Thats because Labour, under Blair and Brown, failed to regulate planning and the market.