 towards housing in the economy and transformed housing into assets for accumulating wealth. Now, this includes a whole range of different things, as I say, stemming back decades now, including rain changes to taxation, various different subsidies for home ownership, right to buy, obviously, which sold off the council housing stock or a large proportion of it. The creation of the buy to let sector and the introduction of buy to let mortgages, the abolishment of rent controls and a whole range of other things, which basically have ended up tilting our economy strongly towards home ownership as a tenure, but more broadly, housing as a type of financial asset. At the same time, this is interacted with the liberalization of the financial sector and basically the easing of access to mortgage credit, both for home ownership and for buy to let landlords, which basically has increased the amount of purchasing power available for housing dramatically over recent decades. And in the paper, we've spent quite a bit of time examining the evidence around this and highlight how the role of banks in our economy has basically shifted quite dramatically in recent decades from the kind of textbook model of providing finance to business for productive investment to basically primarily financing the purchase of already existing houses, real estate, through the supply of mortgages. And so the result has been the emergence of this powerful sort of self-reinforcing feedback loop between on the one hand, the changes to policy and the structural bias that I talked about, mortgage lending and rising house prices. We also examine the role that quantitative easing has had on house prices. Since 2009, as many will be aware, the Bank of England has created nearly 900 billion pounds of new electronic money, which is used to purchase predominantly government but also corporate bonds. And there's been a lot of discussion about how this may or may not be impacting asset prices broadly, but in particular house prices as well. And then the paper, we examined some of the evidence around this, looking at how quantitative easing was expected to work in practice in theory, sorry, but also then the evidence of how it's actually worked in practice. And we find evidence that QE has had a significant impact on house prices, mainly by lowering long-term interest rates more than the otherwise would have done. But crucially, we highlight as well that it's not just QE, but it's interaction with the wider set of institutional policy dynamics and the structural bias that we talk about that has really helped to sort of push that along. And so it's not really QE alone that's been responsible for this, rather it's interaction with the tax, the subsidy, the changes to policy and the liberal financialized system on the other. And so to sum up, we find that the idea that the housing affordability crisis is predominantly explained by lack of supply doesn't really explain much of what's been going on. And then instead, the rising house prices can be found in this sort of structural bias towards housing, which is transformed housing into basically a vehicle for accumulating wealth. And the interaction, of course, with liberalization of the financial sector and the loose monetary policy like QE. And so where we've ended up is basically a situation where any expansionary policies pursued by the government, that can be from fiscal policy or monetary policy like QE, or indeed the easing of lending criteria further, even policies which might at least intend to increase home ownership, like various help to buy subsidies and things like that, inevitably interact with this structural bias and then increase flows of money into the housing market and ultimately accelerating the affordability crisis. And then this is to some degree, what we saw during COVID-19 pandemic, when clearly we had a very large fiscal stimulus and rightly so to support the economy through the pandemic, but this was then accompanied by soaring house prices. And obviously that was fueled again by the stamp duty cut and various other things to help that along. And so as Fran has already mentioned, while successive governments have been claiming that they want to help more people onto the housing ladder and practice what they've been doing is adding more fuel to the fire and kicking the ladder ever further out of reach. Obviously the housing crisis doesn't affect everyone equally. And so we're gonna hand over to Tanisha now who's gonna talk a bit about how housing crisis affects its different dynamics, particular focus in London. And she's also gonna take us through some of the sort of key recommendations of the report. Thank you. Thanks Lauri, that was great. And just hello to everyone while I've got a chance to say that. So yeah, I'm gonna talk about some other aspects of the report now. So what the report does is it shows how the housing crisis is unevenly felt across different demographics in the UK and London. And what we find are there are striking inequalities in the home ownership, housing costs and household wealth or particular groups, ethnic minority groups, the young and low income groups. And as for an example, a recent study showed that almost half of housing wealth in the UK is owned by the over 65s. So they own 46% of all housing equity. Another key example finds that the median net property wealth of the black African, black Caribbean and other ethnic minority households in the last decade was just zero. And this compares to over 100,000 for a white British household. What these examples really tell us is that while many have seen large wealth gains from owning property in the last decade, there are people and communities that are almost entirely excluded from this. These housing and wealth inequalities are even more stark in London where the housing price is clearly more acute. Since 1918, average real house prices have grown a dramatic 326% in London. That compares to 200% for the rest of the UK, which is also high, of course, but more acute in London. So rapid house price growth has led to large wealth gains accruing to property owners and property investors. But it's a very different story for those who are unable to buy a home. The most disadvantaged groups, as mentioned, include some ethnic minorities, the young and those on lower incomes. And these groups suffered disproportionately because they're excluded from home ownership, but also because they face higher housing costs, poorer living conditions and greater insecurity once they're trapped in a private rented sector. So what is clear to us is that owning property is playing an increasing role in wealth inequality. Another example is that in London, the median household wealth of a black and ethnic minority household is six times less than that of the white British household today. And it's remained stubbornly low for the last decade. While we've seen rapid increases in house prices, so this is fueling a divide between the housing haves and the have nots. So successive governments have actually promised often to take action to tackle the housing crisis, but yet we've seen house prices soar during the pandemic and even today as the cost of living prices deepens, that's what we're also seeing. To protect everyone's right to a home, we really need our most powerful public institutions to work together to target more sustainable house prices and tackle the root causes. Moving on to the sort of main recommendations of this report, we call for the UK government to launch a new long-term housing affordability strategy to tackle the systemic causes that Laurie had sort of talked about in the first half and over time to stabilize house prices. The report recommends also a series of recommendations that fall under three key areas and these are macroeconomic policy, market shaping policies and alternatives to home ownership. And this is really because it needs a coordinated and strategic approach over different areas. I'll cover some of these three areas briefly now. So under macroeconomic policy, we propose updating the Bank of England's mandate to support sustainable house prices. This would require the Bank of England's key policymaking committees, that's the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee to support the government's goal to stabilize house prices as part of their secondary objectives. And the report has highlighted, as Laurie mentioned, that the Bank's monetary and financial policy as the Bank of England also contribute to house price inflation. Now how this would be operationalized would be to strengthen existing tools that the Bank of England has and be able to make use of new tools to dampen the expectations of ever rising house prices and to regulate the supply and direction of bank lending. We also recommend a new framework for fiscal and monetary policy coordination between the Bank of England and the Treasury. This would be important because it would reduce the heavy reliance on monetary policy tools, very limited kind of tools that we have which are sort of interest rates and quantitative easing and widen the options for accessing different kinds of tools. And that's because these tools so far have had really unequal distributional effects such as inflating asset and house prices. And finally, to also ensure that the Bank of England could assess and communicate as to whether it can meet its primary objectives without also increasing house and wealth in a policy, housing and wealth in a policy. So moving on to the next policy area that's market shaping policies. Here the report outlines a fairer approach to taxing land and property. And this is critical because it would capture the unend gains from property and the revenue raised, the increased revenue raised could be directed towards increasing social housing and affordable housing. And overall, this would dampen the demand for housing as an asset, which tends to put an upward pressure on the house prices. Within those reforms, some of our highlight would be to increase capital gains tax on second homes, by to let multiple properties and investment properties and bring that in line with income tax rate and generally higher taxes on overseas investors and companies in the property sector. Finally, alternatives to home ownership. So without line policies that would support the provision of more secure and affordable alternatives to home ownership. This includes rent controls, better rights and security for private tenants and scaling up non-market alternatives such as community-led housing and community land trusts. Now, all these policies are aimed at discouraging the treatment of housing with an asset and also support the goal of stabilizing house prices. They also provide immediate relief to those of the sharper end of the housing crisis. And finally, this would align government policy across the board in relation to housing policy with the principle that housing should not be an asset for the few, but a right for all. And finally, I'm just going to circle back to some of the polling results. So we talked that Fran mentioned at the beginning. So we commissioned YouGov polling for the purpose of this report. And the results showed really strong support amongst the public for a bold new approach to tackle the housing crisis. And these results were striking because they shared support for more interventionist policies from the Bank of England to help achieve more sustainable house prices. But there was also recognition that status quo it just isn't working for people anymore. And there was popular support across all regions and all the main political parties. So just to highlight some of those results again, and two-thirds of those survey, that's 66%, and 67% of Londoners said they would support the Bank of England being given a target to keep house prices and keep house price inflation low and stable in the same way it does consumer price inflation. And also the majority of homeowners, that's 54% British public that were surveyed and 57% of Londoners would be happy if their own home did not rise in value over the next 10 years if it meant more affordable homes for those who don't own property. And we thought this was particularly striking because it's often assumed that any policies that would restrict house price rises would be unpopular because homeowners make up the majority tenor in the UK even though home ownership rates are sort of declining. And the polling really shows that even homeowners today recognize that the system is really broken and would be willing to sacrifice future wealth bands to enable other people to have more affordable housing. And finally two-thirds, that's 62% of British public surveyed and 63% of Londoners also believe that the main purpose of a house should be as many a home as opposed to many of financial investment. And I think this shows that the public really wants housing to be returned to its most important role which is really just being a home for people. So yeah, so that's me. Thanks so much, Anisha and Laurie. That was a really fantastic run through of the papers, key findings and the polling. So now I'm gonna bring in the MPs. Thanks again for joining us. So I'd like to start with Tulip if that's okay and invite you to respond. Reflecting on how the housing crisis affects your constituents as a London MP. And also as your role as shadow city minister we'd like to invite you to speak about what a Labour government might do to tackle some of these financial drivers of the affordability crisis. Thanks Fran, thanks for inviting me to speak today and thank you, Anisha and Laurie and everyone at Positive Money for your work on such an important and can I say timely report. I was invited here today in my capacity as shadow economic secretary to the Treasury sometimes referred to as Labour's shadow city minister as Fran has just said and ensuring that the UK's vibrant and innovative financial services sector works for everyone across the country is the number one priority in my brief. I also recognize from being an MP but also being a councillor before that the housing market in this country is utterly dysfunctional. In the last decade we've seen runaway house prices which are out of control and out of reach for most young families trying to get on the ladder. Unfortunately, I would say to you that a lot of my constituents will often say they feel the priority of politicians or politicians it doesn't matter which party is to work with developers to maximize profits rather than building good quality affordable homes. So and indeed if you look at the statistics since 2010 the rate of home ownership has fallen then nearly a million fewer homes owning households under the age of 45. And can I just say Laurie I thought you summed up the structural bias really well in your speech. So I won't go further into that but I think what you've said about the structural bias is absolutely true and relevant and there should be more politicians on this call to listen to that. The other thing that your excellent report has clearly demonstrated is the connection between housing and the banking sector. A well functioning housing market requires a financial services sector that works for the common good of the nation. The report has given me a lot to think about and Denisha also spoke very powerfully about the connection between housing and wealth inequality and how certain groups are clearly discriminated against when it comes to home ownership. It's certainly something that I've seen in my case word that I do in my role as a constituency MP and a lot of what I've heard today about the report is something that I'll take back to the front bench and to my colleagues in the shadow treasury team. And as Fran referenced I'm also speaking today as the MP for Hampstead and Kilburn which is in London. And in my constituency the link between wages and housing costs has completely broken down in recent years. It's increasingly hard for many of my constituents to move up and on and up the housing ladder. Denisha spoke in a speech about the differences between London and the rest of the country and I can certainly vouch for what she said being a London MP and having represented this constituency for the last seven years and then being a councillor before that as well. As a result, the home ownership in my constituency constituency has dramatically gone down since 2010. Private rents now account for over 30% of the population across London average private rents have risen by an astonishing 4,500 pounds a year compared to 2010 which is miles ahead of my constituents average wage growth. Laurie also touched on a number of these topics around the affordability of housing. And I actually do agree that the supply of new homes isn't a single bullet for solving this enormous crisis that we see in London but face also across the country. It's got to be a holistic approach. It can't just be about building a range of houses especially if the housing isn't affordable or social housing but part of the solution to this and this report has identified it's got to be about the government promoting a more diverse banking system. And as we're looking to build a strong financial service sector outside of the EU there is an opportunity to radically rethink what our banking and investment models look like. For example, the cooperative and mutual banks face many regulatory barriers to the market such as outdated requirements on redrawable capital. This is something I'm working on quite a lot in my brief as shadow treasury. Supporting new ownership banking models to thrive could provide greater choice and competition for the public and could also help to reorientate the banking sector away from property and towards investment in businesses and local communities. A focus on property speculation has seen businesses starved of capital investment and indeed the rate of business startups have fallen in every region in England since 2016 and is down 11% nationally. Personally, I feel the government's British business bank has done a little to increase capital investment in the private sector to support new businesses outside of London the Southeast or to solve the UK's productivity problem. So Fran asked a bit about what we would do. Well, the Labour Party's pledged to back the next generation of British entrepreneurs with the creation of 100,000 new businesses across the UK if we were in government in our first term. And I recognise this would require radical new thinking on how firms can access startup capital. I'm also in complete agreement with positive money that the tax system is desperately in need of reform. The Labour Party has said that if we're in government, we would oversee the biggest overhaul of taxation in a generation to make it fair for taxpayers, to make it fair for businesses and to make it fair for our economy. And fundamentally, I believe this has got to be about ensuring that unearned income, whether that's private equity bonuses, a landlord's rental income, is taxed at a much higher, is taxed at a rate much closer to earned income. And I think that's something we would definitely be pushing for if the Labour Party were in government. We don't want to place the highest burdens on ordinary working people's incomes. And I don't think it was right that the income of landlords with large numbers of properties was completely untouched in the spring statement, which I'm sure all of you heard last week. I believe this is bad for job creation, it's bad for productivity and we'll do nothing to fix the broken housing market, which we've been discussing today. But finally, I also want to address the point in your report about supporting alternatives to home ownership. I'm absolutely clear that a new settlement on housing demands, bold radical forward thinking. As a country, we need to move on from the false choice of either promoting home ownership or supporting renters. It really is a false choice. I think some people in the school will probably agree with me. That's why we've said that Labour's new settlement on housing will include a massive increase in the number of high quality council and social homes being built. But I again, go back to the fact that there's no contradiction between this and Labour's deep commitment to home ownership, not for more landlords or second homes, but for ordinary people in my constituency, whether they're electricians, they're nurses, delivery drivers, care workers who are currently priced out of the market. It's something I hear about every day in my constituency surgeries or when I'm out and about walking around. I could talk about this forever. It's something I'm very passionate about, but I'll hand over to another MP on the panel. But what I would just finish off by saying is I'll paraphrase Danisha slightly by saying that housing shouldn't be a privilege. It should be for all. And I sincerely believe that in terms of housing, it should be a home and not an investment. Thanks so much, Tulia. And yes, it'd be great to bring you in now, Kevin, if we can invite you to respond to the paper. Also reflecting on how the housing crisis affects your constituents in Thirskamalton, but also primarily as chair of the APPG on Fair Business Banking, it'd be great to hear your thoughts on how policymakers could steer more bank lending to the real economy in a way from unproductive mortgage lending. And also your position on the Treasury Select Committee, it'd be good to hear your thoughts on whether this discussion should be happening there. Yes, well, thank you very much. Thanks for the invitation. And yes, I remember part of Thirskamalton, which is in a very glorious part of Glorious County in North Yorkshire. And house prices are very expensive in my patch. I think we will look at the North and think it's all very affordable. But we've got average house prices in much of my constituency, around about £300,000, which doesn't sound a lot, I suppose, if you're looking from a perspective of London, we've probably got an average of 500,000 pounds across the city. But our average wages, of course, are pretty low, something like 20,000. So it's a big issue in my constituency, particularly in certain parts of it, such as the National Park, North York Moors. So also before Parliament, I've been in the property industry for 30 years. I've known an estate agency, Lettings Business, which gave a national business over 30 years. So, but I'm an estate agent, man and boy. In fact, I think I'm the only person who's entered politics and improved my social standing. But it really is an issue I know very well and I was keen to share my reflections on, really. And I think the report is excellent. I think there's some very good points. And I absolutely agree. I mean, I think it's pretty naive for governments of all persuasions to come at this and look at it as a supply-only problem, fix the supply, resolve the problems. Absolutely not the case. And if you look at my constituency, or Suria, whatever you've got, the house prices in terms of a multiple of incomes of well-in-double digits, 10 to 15 times in many areas of the country. Even if you're built enough houses for prices to drop by 20%, you're still horrendously unaffordable. And I've got to tell you from a Member of Parliament's perspective, it's not a very pleasant thing to go into a local public meeting and tell all the local people, which many of which will turn up to listen to you while you've got to say about housing and telling them the house prices are going to drop by 20% in their area, and most of those people are going to be home owners. So I think it's the wrong thing to look at this through the supply lens only. And certainly if you look at other areas where there is scarcity in terms of planning and availability of a building land isn't as bad as the UK, by the US you've still got big house price inflation driven largely by availability of credit, which I think is exactly what the report says. So we've got to try and fix that problem. I think it's right to look at this through a political lens as well, and Tula and I have probably slightly different perspectives. I think it's fair to say we as a party do believe in a home ownership, not just home ownership. I don't think it should be, I don't think it's either or Tula. I think we think there should be a place for both affordable rented, properly affordable rented homes, social housing, as well as affordable homes to purchase. But nevertheless, we do see that as not as, as part of people's opportunity in this country to own their own home and I support that choice. So, and the government's doing quite a lot in that area to try and reverse this trend, particularly it's right to say home ownership peaked in the past, it peaked in 2001 and it's been declining ever since. We've recently seen a slight increase in home ownership, but that's very early days, but this has been a systemic problem, pan government, so across different political, governments of different political persuasions. So it is a problem we need to see fixed, but not just in terms of ownership, but also long, any tenure that gives people long-term securities, and we've got to focus on to give people that choice. I mean, the government's doing quite a lot, it's increased its budgets for affordable homes, budgets 11 and a half billion quid, I think over this next cycle, the next three year period, and also a couple of billion quid into things like the Brownfield Fund as well, to try and release more properties on Brownfield and rather than focus it all on Greenfield, which developers inevitably will do. So the government really, as well as what it's doing to try and fix the affordability, to try and affordability of home ownership, it's looking at, it's done things like mortgage guarantee, so it's increased the number of loans available, 95% loans to value, it's had to provide guarantees to the banks to do that. You could argue that's counterproductive in the long term, it makes the housing market more risky and I've been through three down cycles in my time in the housing market, so it does this push to high loans of values, tends to end in tears time and time again, but nevertheless, that's where it's gone for young people to try and get a housing ladder, it's increased those numbers of high loans of value mortgages. It's also done a couple of good policies, I think, shared ownership, I'm less keen on, but it's okay, but also first terms, which cost first terms, which is this thing where people can buy a property at an in perpetuity discount, so you buy a property up to half price, and so you buy that home at half price, which makes it much more affordable if you're on a certain, if you're on low incomes, and then when you come to selling, you're selling on to the next person, it's half the then going price, which I think is a good policy that's been used in the past and we should use more in the future. So in terms of solutions where we should get to, and I'll come to one or two pieces that you've come to in the report, but I think we've got to start planning out, planning is a big problem in the UK, clearly we restrict the availability of land, planning controls to try and protect the countryside and our beautiful towns and villages, so that does cause problems, but then if we're going to do that, we have to have an effective planning system, so it needs to properly resource our planning departments to make sure we can get a throughput of planning consent, speeders for houses to rent or houses to purchase. We've got to sort that, that's an absolute fundamental, we have not got that right at the moment. We've got to invest more in social housing, truly affordable social housing to rent, we've got to invest more in these first homes as well, I think, I would rebad them half price homes, I think people understand what they are much more effectively, it's an intervention to be used in other countries, I think it's a good intervention and we should invest more in it, shared ownership certainly, I think we need to do some stuff in terms of reforming council tax, whether we should go the whole hog and do a land value tax, which I think the report proposes, I'm not too sure, I think it might be very complicated to get from where we are today to that system, but I certainly would be in favor of adding a lower council tax ban to reduce the burden on people in lower value homes, in terms of council tax, they pay a disproportionate amount of council tax compared to people in more expensive homes, I think a million pound home in London, actually in many cases the council tax on that is lower than a 200,000 pound homes in North Yorkshire, it can't be right, so I would add a lower ban, which is more affordable for people in lower value homes and a higher ban for people, so it's a bit less affordable for people in very valuable homes. I'd also do some stuff on extra council tax for second homes, this is a big issue in places like mine where lots of second home owners, holiday homes, I think we should be able to charge, I think Wales has just introduced 400% of council tax for those kind of properties to try and deter people who want to, they want to buy properties in my area's second home, don't live in there very often and squeeze our young people out of the housing market. I'd also do an annual charge on overseas owners of UK homes, 1% of value or something like that, which could raise four or five billion pounds, which you could then put that extra money into affordable homes for our young people. I think the points you raise in terms of making, I think giving the Bank of England some jurisdiction over house price inflation is an interesting one. I think that's just been tried in New Zealand. It will be interesting to see how that works. It does complicate their remit, of course, and there's all kinds of things we're giving the Bank of England now responsibility for, which in things like competitiveness and all kinds of stuff, which could mean it takes its eye off the ball in terms of the big focus, which has got to be inflation and that can cause other problems and lead to some unintended consequences, such as the financial crisis of 2008 when we had a competitiveness objective there. So whether that would lead to them taking an eye off the ball I'd be concerned about, but I think it's interesting and this will probably lead to the cost of capital for things like other non-productive lending, which is lending into whether it be mortgages or credit cards or whatever, which we don't really see. We see our banks very keen to focus on those areas rather than focus on the productive economy, as you might call it, which I'm very keen on, which is really particularly lending to SMEs. And I think we should make it easier or make it more attractive for our banks to lend to SMEs and that's our commercial banks, but also I'd love to see the reform in terms of bringing forward a different type of banking that has a different cultural purpose. Regional mutual banks are very important parts of the banking sector in Germany, for example, in Japan, in the USA, in fact, every G7 country apart from the UK, and they are focused on financial inclusion, they're focused on lending to the productive economy including our SMEs, unless inclined to focus on lending to especially in terms of a high-value lending, high-lunch of value lending into mortgages and the like. I think this really could be a very important policy. It's something the all-passing upon fair business banking is recommended and it's scale up to level of reports. And I think it would seek to rebalance our economy away from just simply asset-based lending into something far more productive. So it's a really good report. Thank you very much for doing it and keen to see where it goes and how it's received by the powers being in government. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, I'm great to hear kind of cross-party support for alternatives to our current model of banking in the UK. That is the way that we need to move forward. I'm keen to let the panel respond to each other if they wish and kind of pose questions just for a short time before we bring in some audience questions. And I think, obviously housing is a very political issue and for us, the starting point in terms of getting this system change, which is what we need if we're going to bring house prices under control, it is thinking about, it has kind of been thought about or assumed that if house prices are going up, things are fine and homeowners will be happy because they're still the largest housing constituent as Dinesha mentioned. But we're saying today from our polling, actually, 54% will be happy if the homes did not rise in value for 10 years and that meant that houses are more affordable for those who don't own property. So surely that's kind of game-changing. So I want to come to you first, Norrie. You wrote a book on this, Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing in 2007, five years ago. What's changed since then? Is there a mood change? Are things getting bad enough that politicians have to take systemic change and the financial drivers, the banking drivers seriously? Is it still too much? Yeah, thanks Fran. I think on the one hand, I mean, over the past five years, I think things have changed. Some welcome developments and I suppose some probably less welcome. On the one hand, I think there is a growing recognition that the housing crisis is an extremely severe issue and also that it's not just about addressing supply. I think we have, I think the argument at least to some extent has moved on slightly to recognize that there are a wider range of sort of policy and financial drivers at play, which has been pointed out already that is aren't new, but instead which have been sort of accumulating and building up over decades. I think we have seen a shift in approach from the UK government somewhat, particularly since Michael Gove became minister, sort of moving away from putting the sort of sole emphasis on planning reform to sort of recognizing some of these other issues. At the same time though, I think, you know, clearly the housing crisis has continued to get much more severe and I think we're in a worse position than we were five years ago. And the COVID-19 pandemic has really sort of brought that into sharp focus. We saw, despite the economy contracting by a record event, we saw about 10%, I think it was. We saw house prices increased by 10%, you know, which just sort of illustrates that how sort of out of sync and detached the housing market has become. And at the same time, we've seen private renters, you know, forced to endure lockdown often in very poor conditions, crowded conditions and poor quality housing. And of course, many of them have been pushed into rent arrears as a result of the pandemic. So it's really sort of illustrated, I think the pandemic sort of brought through even more some of the issues that we face. And so certainly, you know, it's been a sort of double-edged sword over the past five years. I think progress has been made in some areas, but we have to recognise the reality, which is that where we're at just now is probably the most sort of severe stage of the crisis that we've seen for quite some time. Thanks, Laurie. But I want to come to you next to nature if that's okay. Just to bring you in here, particularly on expanding some of the polling results that we received on taxation and rent, just to give us some more detail. Yeah, thanks, Fran. So we did have some more polling around issue tax increases. And one of the questions was whether people would support or oppose changes to council tax that basically meant higher-valued properties would pay more than lower-valued properties. And as Kevin highlighted, it's quite an unfair system as it is at the moment. And we found a majority support across those surveys, so 51% would support a fairer sort of council tax system so that people with higher-valued properties paid more than those with lower-valued properties. And across Londoners, that was 48%, so almost a majority. What was, I guess, interesting is that across tenor groups, 63% of renters poll so that they would support that and 49% of owners. So there was a little discrepancy there. What was also interesting is that people polled, gave a majority support for higher taxes on wealth, such as capital gains tax, if the money raised from that was used to improve local services. And that would be things like, I guess, social housing and affordable housing. So the breakdown there was 57% total support for higher wealth taxes to support local services. A majority of 50% in London and amongst renters, it was 67% and owner occupies 54%. And I think just to round this up, what people felt about house prices and rent prices in their local areas. It was basically sort of resounding, it's too expensive. So in terms of house prices, there was 59% poll felt they were too high. Amongst Londoners, that was 75%. And then in terms of private rental prices, 62% agreed that private rents are too expensive and 70% Londoners agreed. And there's a slight discrepancy between tenor types. 78% of renters thought rental prices were too high, but 55% of owners thought the same. So some discrepancy across housing and tenor, but generally majority support for higher taxes that support local services. Thanks, Anisha. We're keen to bring our MPs back in on their report recommendations. So yeah, as you've outlined, Anisha, there is support for high wealth taxes, which is something too that you've said the Labour Party would support. You've both kind of talked about the need for new models of banking to kind of break the kind of incredible amount of credit that flows into mortgage lending, which is critical. But it would be also good to hear about thoughts on the report's recommendation for the Bank of England needing a new target, Kevin, you've expressed some skepticism, but it'd be good to hear from you, Trulia, on that front. And yeah, and I'll bring in a question that was posed when we asked people to pose questions when they signed up. This one's from Joseph O'Toole, who talks about, basically ask the parties like, out of these recommendations, which could have the most political will in your party and which would have the least political will? So I'm not sure who wants to come in first. Maybe I'll come to you first, Trulia. Yeah, I'll come in first. So I'll say, there's so much I can say on this, so I won't start talking too much, but I'll pick on a few things in addition to your question, Fran. And Anisha's polling results, it doesn't surprise me at all that people are talking about, they're willing to pay a bit more, basically, if it's invested into public services. And that's something I keep hearing over and over again. I think there is a real appetite to reform taxation, but people want to know where their money is. Well, we've lost you, Tulip, hopefully we'll be able to get you back. Yeah, okay, we can hear you again now. We just lost you for a second. Oh, sorry, sorry. I think the gist of what you said doesn't surprise me in terms of the polling, because that's what I hear on the doorstep. Can you hear me, Fran? I've just got a little message saying my internet connection is unstable, but it should be fine. Okay, I'll just pick on a few things quickly. One thing I'd say is that current definition of affordable housing is anything but, and that's one thing I really wanted to say, that we've got to reestablish the link between work and affording a home by redefining what affordable housing actually is. It's got to be linked to local incomes rather than the over-inflated housing market. And that's something I think we, all politicians across the board have to work on. And Kevin and I have worked on things together before, and I know we probably agree on that. One of the things I agree with with the Positive Money Report is too much private capital is bound up in property speculation. That's one of the things that I've made a note of here. I think the reports proposal for a national development bank, it's possibly supported by a network of regional banks could have a lot of potential because it would significantly increase investment in small and medium-sized businesses and sort of shift the focus away from property speculation and boost productivity. So that's something in the report that I thought was very interesting. We're a bit too far away from an election for me to announce specific policies on this today. I probably got into a lot of trouble if I did. But what I would say is that we're absolutely committed to unlocking capital because we want to support the creation of 100,000 new businesses. So what we've got to do is think in a new way about how financial services are structured. And in terms of the report's recommendation, I think the growing consensus that the tax system just isn't working in this country. So we've got to make sure that unearned income is taxed at a closer rate to earned income, which I've already talked about. But it's also, you know, recognizing that homeowners are not land laws with multiple properties. We do recognize that property ownership is an important source of financial security for lots of households across the country. And no one wants to see house prices go into free fall. So there's got to be a focus on increasing the number of genuinely affordable homes available in the market, which you guys have talked about a lot. One of the things I wanted to mention as well is, you know, when I was in the council, one of the things I was most proud of being involved with was called the community investment program. It was from Camden Council. That's where I was. Is where we would look at all the assets we have in Camden, which is a very crowded borough. So a dilapidated community center, for example, we'd knock it down. We would rebuild it and we would build housing on top. And that's how we mapped out the entire borough and increased affordable homes and council homes by doing that. One of the main problems we found is that the law is so heavily sort of against increasing proper affordable housing. And we found that developers always won in the end. So some of the properties we would look at and we would build on, we would then from the community reject some of the planning applications because we didn't feel there was enough social and affordable housing for local people. The government then had the authority, whichever government it was, had the authority to call in a planning decision and overturn the wishes of the community. And that happened to us twice when I was on the council. So I think planning law also needs to be looked at quite carefully because what happens is properties were built while I was in the council and local people didn't get even a look in. I'm not being a nimby here, but it would be snapped up and bought immediately for investment by foreign ownership. And it did mean that my constituents lost out. So I think we look at the tax system and look at reforming it, but I also think there's a real kind of need to look at planning laws and applications and the role of the council as well. So that's, I would say, what I would focus on if we were in government. Frank, I can go on forever. So maybe I should stop for a minute and let Kevin come in. I don't know if he agrees or disagrees, but happy to respond. Yeah, well, it'd be good to come back to maybe, because I know you have to leave not too long, but we'll bring in Kevin now if that's okay. Yeah, thanks. I mean, I'm sure that I could discuss this to the council in my own country. I mean, I think the thing about all this is, I think too often we look at this debate against political debate, like it's good and evil. If you think one way, you're bad, you think another way, you're good. Actually, I don't, and I, we get things wrong. I think sometimes the opposition get things wrong too, but we all want the same outcome, I think. And we all want a system where housing is more affordable. There's a choice between long-term rented and a home ownership, or short-term rented if people want that. So I think pretty much we're all sensible people that are somewhere in the middle here, not rather on the extremes of thinking, but we have different concerns about, different ideas about how we get there and different concerns about different approaches. So I think that's the most sensible way to look at this. So I agree with some of the stuff that students say, but some of it, I just think if you had a situation where local authorities had, with the ultimate arbiter of planning decisions, then you'd find lots of local authorities, lots of areas, which are obviously accountable to their elected members, would not give consent on housing developers. That's the problem with that. And so you've got to have a national policy because this is a national issue as well as being a local issue. So there are problems with having a council as the ultimate say. And I don't think any political parties ever had a planning system in this country where the local planning authorities have the final say. There's always an appeal to an inspector and potentially a secretary can call that application in as well. And that's always been the case. It would be quite radical and I think very dangerous to give councils the final say, but in all occasions, although this should be the primary decision maker, the first decision maker. So in terms of the particular, I'll talk about the other political point I would just make here as well. When you're saying about making taxing earned income, unearned income, the same as earned income, the difficult with that is, for say, I have no idea, I don't have the discussion about capital gain stacks, usually this comes to, but you've got a price in risk somewhere. So earned income usually, where a job is less risky thing to do than getting income from say, dividends. I started a business, I built a business. A lot of my income came from dividends as a business came more successful. But that was because I took a huge risk starting that business in the first place. Now, I absolutely agree. There are some people who are getting unearned income, effectively getting taxed on earned income when actually it's pretty much like earned income and that those areas you've got to focus on, but really be careful, we don't tax people who have taken a big risk in the same way as you taxing people who don't have the same risk. Otherwise you will find people will not invest capital at, be very detrimental to this country. In terms of the exam question, given which would be most popular in terms of proposals and least popular, I think the diverse banking would be popular. That's really gaining traction in our party. I don't have any resistance to this idea of regional mutual banks. To give you an idea how important this could be for SMEs particularly, between 2008 and 2013, so post recession, the UK commercial banks withdrew support for SMEs, reducing amount of lending to SMEs by 25% during that period. That is a category fact. In Germany, from their regional mutual banks, which is the predominant sector for business banking in Germany, the increase lending by 20% just at that time they need you. That's the kind of banking system we need. So that would have traction, it's getting traction. The least popular thing I think my colleagues would, and I would see in this report would be rent controls. But when rent controls have been tried anywhere in the world they have failed because they absolutely categorically do mean a reduction in supply because there's all kinds of reasons for that when you debate at length, but that's the outcome. So that would be the least popular measure but we can have proper debate on that if you'd like. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, we get to hear from one of the panelists on that if that's, I think that's true or not. Judith, can I bring you back in just in case you have to go for then, when I bring you in? Yeah, I'm really sorry. I do have to go, I'm really sorry. I wouldn't have gone if it wasn't a very important meeting but I've got a very important piece of case from Ukraine that I just can't, I've got to go to this meeting. I'll just say on, I just wanted to make a point about renters rights because I felt like we talked a lot about renters and I didn't maybe focus enough on that, but a strengthening of renters rights for me in a radical overhaul of the rental market which I don't feel is working for the majority of people in the UK and something your report does touch on is something that we would be very sympathetic to from the Labour Party, but also I think just a universal register of landlords cracking down on road landlords, those are the things we would be very supportive of and I would want the government if Kevin, if you can pass this message across, we do want it to deliver on its promise of scrapping section 21 because I think at the moment, the market is so heavily in favour of landlords in terms of evicting a tenant at any point. I do think something's got to be done about that. That's the kind of case where I deal with every single day in my constituency MP role. So if there's any way we could make the rental market fairer especially for young people who don't know their rights, that would be a very, very positive outcome, I think from the pandemic because I think it really rose to prominence during the pandemic because everyone was talking about homes and home ownership. And can I just say Fran, that I'm tulip at tulipsadig.com If anyone wants to carry on this conversation, if they email me, there's only one MP called tulip, you'll find me very easily online. So if you want to get in touch, I'd like to continue this conversation but we'd also like to pass this report onto our colleagues in Parliament. So I think a lot of them could benefit from hearing what you're saying as well. Like I said, apologies for running off but happy to carry on the conversation. Thank you so much, Jo. You've been really great, have your contributions and we'll definitely pick up the conversation. Thanks very much. Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to bring in some questions from the audience now. So, we have talks quite a lot about supply and the report obviously outlines that in order to bring house prices in the control, we need to look at the financial drivers. I'm just going to kind of bring that to the fore. Hopefully, I can maybe bring Laurie into answer that question. But from Jeff Tidy from the TUC, have you come across any evidence that house building reduces prices or does that happen only in theory? I'm going to ask two more questions before I go to the panelist. So the second one is from Richard Jackman. A solution would be good news for aspiring yet frustrated house buyers but probably terrifying for ordinary homeowners whose primary wealth is tied to their property. Is there a win-win or does one group have to take some pain for the common good? And from Sarah Lansenby, house prices may be gigantic, but what about rents? Rents in Oxford this week are at least 1,000 up to 1,300 a month. This rate, what is left to live on? This must have a big effect on the local economy. Can we reduce house prices and rents? So don't feel like you have to respond to them all. Just a brief answer to one or two and then I can take another round of three questions. Also, we are able to take questions from Facebook Live, so please feel free to put your questions in the comment and that will find their way to me as well. So I'll go to you first, Laurie, if that's OK. Yeah, sure. So maybe take the first question then from Jeff, I think it was, on supply. I mean, so it's a good question and this is something which obviously, you know, in the discourse and the debate is often sort of the conventional wisdom really, which is that, you know, building more houses will help to improve affordability. And in the report, we do examine this, you know, in a reasonable amount of detail, looking at some of the work that's been done. And we find that actually the evidence to support that isn't particularly strong. And it's both in terms of looking historically at what's happened in the UK, but also looking at other evidence because it should perhaps not be that surprising when you think about it, because economists are used to thinking if you increase supply, price will come down. What's different about the housing market, of course, is that most of the transactions that take place in that housing are secondhand. There are already existing properties that have been traded on the secondhand market, if you like, it's not sort of brand new housing. And even if you did dramatically increase the supply of new housing, it would still actually not represent, you know, a very big proportion of the total. And the UK government's own house price model, which is published, suggests that even if homes had grown, supply of homes had grown by 300,000 every year since 1996, which should obviously far outstrip the growth of households, the average house price today would only be 7% cheaper. So obviously that's not gonna make much of a dent in the, you know, 120 plus percent increase in real house prices that we've seen over that time period. And so, you know, just to stress though, again, before I conclude, you know, that's not to say that there aren't good reasons for building houses. There are, we need different types of housing, different types of a tenure that are genuinely affordable, as Julie said, but we shouldn't then sort of pretend that that's gonna by itself solve the systemic problem of, you know, very high house prices relative to incomes, because it isn't. And so we need to look at other things as well. Thanks, Laurie. I'll come to you next, Daneisha, if you're up to respond to either of the other two questions. Yeah, I think I, the questions, the third question on rent prices and how I think it's Oxford, how they've risen so much, and there has been reports lately of, like, fastest growth in rental prices for a decade or so taking place now. And I think I'd probably disagree with what Kim has said about rent controls, because it's in the report. But I think, you know, historically, for much of the 20th century, we've had rent controls in the UK and much of Europe and parts of America also have rent controls. And it's, there are examples of where it hasn't worked well, I think recently in Berlin, there was a breakdown of how the rent controls were working there in that region. But generally rent controls could be designed in many different ways. It's, you know, either an increase on the rate or the rate of increases or the level. And I think one really important aspect to how we can make rent controls work better is to devolve powers to local areas and to regions so that they can design it so that it suits the local economy and are able to kind of assess what impact it's having. And gradually impose it. I think one of the themes of this report and throughout this report is this idea that we do with anything around the housing market, we do have to gradually impose changes because it's so intimately linked to people's wealth and incomes and also the macro economy has a big effect on the macro economy that gradually introducing policies is really important so that you can kind of see in an iterative way what impact it's having and adapt. So I think in this report, because we use London as a case study, we talk about powers being devolved to London so that they can have more control over how they can implement a rent controls policy. And I think New York House Foundation has done some sort of groundwork on that recently in terms of how it could be designed and work well in the London context. So yeah, I think rent controls are a really important policy that needs to be considered now by the government given rental prices are increasing so substantially. And yeah, a careful design in order to take account for the fact that supply might be affected. But it would also mean sort of institutional changes because where supply contracts from private landlords, we can have more sort of different kinds of provisions of housing. So different non-market forms of housing as well coming in to take that place or social housing. So I think anything like that just needs to be very carefully designed. Thanks, Daneisha. And yeah, it'd be great to bring you in, Kevin, on the other question, I guess I'm gonna rephrase it a little bit, but would you feel confident going to your constituent saying, house prices need to stabilise so that more people can live in a decent home? How do you think that that message would go down? Yeah, I think we get it. I think, yeah, I mean, I think the win-win and I have no problem telling my constituents is we have moderated house price growth, not moderated by some artificial intervention just by good series of policies. That's what we'd like. So if house prices were growing at the rate of inflation or slightly above say low single digits as it were at one point, then that would be the ideal place to be. The difficulty housing market of course is so unpredictable and there's so many different factors. I mean, who could have ever imagined that the pandemic would be responsible for a house price boom? Who could have ever planned for that? And that's exactly what's happened as people had more disposable income because they weren't spending on other things, holidays and cars. So they spent it on their house. So it resulted in this crazy house price boom. I just go back to this overall thing. The free market is actually, this is gonna look some really controversial. The free market actually worked quite well in terms of the housing market generally. So back in my early days in the state agency in York which was actually prior to the housing act of 1984, I think it was where we've deregulated which basically scrapped long-term tenure and brought in a short short of tenancy which meant landlords stepped in and started to invest in a much bigger way in terms of housing. Prior to that, when I first started, if you were to rent a house in York, you had a choice of a couple of pretty shabby, dark dingy terraced houses. There's very little choice available. And that's because it was heavily regulated. Back then, if you wanted, if you were landlord of a property and you wanted to re-occupy, you had to provide another house for that tenant. And if the rent increases were very tightly controlled or rent controls in existence back then, but there was no market for the rent, there was no free market rent. So therefore, all the, if you wanted to increase it, you could only increase it somewhere because it was consistent with other prices which were all controlled as well. You really put massive restrictions on landlords which deterred investment. That's the absolute factor for what was happening back then. If you move to, all in favor of a register of landlords, in fact, the government is doing that. And that should mean better standards that should the property rental standards set against that. But if you scrap section 21, which I have concerns about, you'll move to rent controls. That's exactly what's happening in Scotland when they effectively scrap their version in section 21, they're moving to rental controls, rent controls. I think that will reduce choice in the marketplace. You'll have more institutional investors, but fewer other investors. And actually that leads back to that question on, I think it was on Cambridge about the rents in Cambridge which in many cases is unaffordable to lots of people. That's why you need interventions to build a social housing for people on lower incomes. That's where we try and solve that problem. But actually, the free market around landlords buying properties to rent out has actually provided more choice and actually has moderated rental price growth. So lots of landlords are happy with a three or 4% increase in rents every year, which is pretty affordable and a three or 4% yield, which is quite low in historic terms. So by all means into being in the marketplace, I'm not against that, but be careful what we're sure or be careful what we do because we couldn't make matters much worse. Thanks, Kevin. Okay, we get to hear the other panelists' thoughts on that, but I'll bring in some more questions from the audience. So John Leach says, how do we call the housing market without risking a bubble burst, which I guess is the critical question and something that the report authors have talked about. We get to hear some further thoughts on that. Matthew Spires from London Renters Union, what would be your advice to London Renters Union? How best to concentrate their energies to create systemic change needed? It's a pity that Tulips had to leave. I know she'd be wanting to comment on that. And Matthew also wants to make us aware that there's a campaign side with renters in their run up to the local election. I'll share the link. Pauline Jones says, why was housing used as an investment tool like stocks and shares when it's a vital need for the general population? And why have successive governments let overseas investors buy up blocks of flats in London where they could avoid paying stamp duty and very little capital gains tax? And I'm gonna add one more just because we're running out of time. So Edward Gordon-Rolands says, house values depend on the price of land and build cost. The bulk of land is owned by a minority of people. Is that not where the inequality lies? And I guess I should mix up the order. So maybe I can come to you first, Dinesha, at this time. Yeah. So I think the first question was around the sort of housing bubble first. How can we avoid the bubble bursting? I think one of the things I think I've sort of mentioned is one of the things about the report is that it sort of argues for a sort of long-term strategic approach. And it's particularly... It's quite specific in terms of the way in which we talk about the mandate for the Bank of England. It's not suggesting that the Bank of England has a sort of statutory objective to reduce house prices, but it's part of their secondary objectives to support the government. As there needs to be sort of joined up approach between government, Bank of England and local governments and local regions. So the idea is that it'd be more of a managed approach to stabilizing house prices rather than any overnight kind of sudden changes because overnight sudden changes, external shocks tend to have a big effect on the macro economy and can be quite damaging. And we know recessions that are triggered by house prices falling are also much longer than other kinds of recessions are much deeper. So these are kind of sort of serious things to take into consideration. And I think another element of that that's really important is the distributional impact of policies that we haven't maybe discussed as much, but a lot of policies that relate to the housing market have distributional effects. And so the idea is that giving the Bank of England the opportunity to be able to assess and communicate what those distributional effects are and what different kinds of policies would be useful rather than just relying on a very limited set of policies would allow them to communicate to the government. For example, when the government's stoking the house prices, like what we saw during the pandemic was stamp duty cuts and mortgage-back guarantees that didn't necessarily help first-time buyers. They were sort of across the board. So people with existing homes and leverage and wealth could really benefit from those, not necessarily the most disadvantaged groups. So I think distributional element of this as well is really important to take into account. And yeah, I think there was a question about from the London Renters Union as well, what can they do to... Well, I think these systemic drivers have become more important for people to understand and being discussed a lot more. What we did in the report was sort of talk about, sort of select the sort of policies that resonate and having talked a lot about by Ventus campaigns and housing campaign groups because they both, they serve sort of two goals. One is to sort of hit those systemic drivers, but also to provide immediate support to renters and those sort of sharp end of the housing prices. So I think, yeah, the policies that we've described in the report align very much with what housing campaign groups have already been saying. So hopefully there's sort of overlap in interests there as well. Thanks, Anisha. I'll come to you next, Laurie. Yeah, thanks. And just firstly, just to add on the first question, just what Anisha said about how do we avoid the crash in the economy? I think this is something that obviously is kind of the key question, something we're very cognizant of in writing this report and certainly something that we would definitely, definitely be seeking to avoid. And some of the challenges just to build on what Anisha said, obviously on the one hand, for many households now, the home that they live in is their primary store of wealth, meaning that their net worth, their wealth is inextricably tied to the buoyancy of the housing market. And obviously that creates political challenges in the context where the majority of households are homeowners. And that's why I think the polling that we did as part of this report is quite interesting, is quite powerful, showing that actually, people now would be content with their house price not increasing if it meant being more affordable for others. But also just coming back to what Anisha said about the macroeconomic impact, our economy now is intimately linked to the buoyancy of the housing market. Households typically spend more when house prices rise and less when house prices fall. And we know that many recessions are also intimately linked to the housing market. And finally, obviously we have a banking system whose balance sheets are largely secured against UK house prices. And so any sharp decreases in house prices not only might push households in trouble in negative equity, but it would also potentially push banks into trouble as well. And so we do actually recognize the sensitivities and the complexities around this. And that's why we've outlined that this sort of long-term strategic approach which aims to take that transition, basically allowing the house price-to-income ratio come down over time, wages to catch up while avoiding these sharp shocks, if you like, which could create significant losers and winners overnight and create all kinds of unintended consequences. So just to emphasize that point is something we're very aware of. And then just on the point about why is housing used as an investment tool? I mean, I think it's worth thinking that housing really plays two roles in the economy. On the one hand, it's an essential duty that provides shelter. And from that perspective, it's kind of desirable for rents and prices to stay low because it means that an essential good is affordable. On the other hand though, this role is an important financial asset, both for homeowner's and of course, for buy-to-let landlords who are investing in this to make a return. And from that perspective, it's desirable for rents and prices to increase. And so there's a tension here, fundamental tension between these two roles of housing in the economy. And I think we've seen the balance shift much more in favor of financial asset versus an essential good. And there was a great quote from Philip Hammond, I remember when he was chancellor, where he kind of said something along the lines of her empire phrasing here. We absolutely want to make housing more affordable. It's a key priority for us. But at the same time, we want to make sure that people can continue to accumulate wealth through the housing market like their parents generation did. Kind of not recognizing there is a fundamental tension there between on the one hand, people being able to continue to accumulate wealth through rising house prices and making the housing market more affordable. And so, yeah, I think this is an issue which that we try and touch on it in the report, but yeah, it's something which is clearly an important thing to be thinking about. Thanks so much, Laurie. And Kevin, I'll bring you in for any final comments on those questions. Yeah, I mean, I've got to say, standing back from all the kind of day-to-day stuff on housing, I mean, I absolutely support the reports approach that we need a more strategic way of managing the housing market. I think it's so welcome, absolutely bang on. And strategic approaches are not particularly consistent with together political cycles that we kind of go through. Short term, we always think two or three years, we don't think 20, 30 years, and that's not desirable. That's just not the way that we should do things. Businesses don't do that. Putin doesn't do that. I mean, that's the advantage of if we can stand back for something and look at things strategically we don't tend to do that. I mean, a good example of that is the fact that the government stepped in and to support higher loans of value borrowing for first-time buyers, trying to get on the housing ladder. And, you know, you can see why we do that, but every single bust we have seen, the answer to that question where the bubble burst has always been in my life because of high loans of value lending. That's what happened in the mid-1980s. That's what happened in the 90s. It was irresponsible lending by the banks who thought the house prices could never fall. And that was their risk-based approach, it's bonkers. And what we love for mystery is we don't learn from mystery and that will happen again. So that would be absolutely support that, which I can see why the Bank of England, given that kind of mandate, could mean that, for example, we don't let those high loans of value mortgages proliferate, which is what happens. So I can see there is a case for that as a secondary objective. So I think it needs more discussion. In terms of the point on overseas homes, I absolutely agree with that person's point on that. And that's why I said before, I think anybody who lives overseas owns a property in the UK should be subject to a 1% value levy on that property, annual levy. So if you own a £500,000 house, in London, you'd pay five grand a year to own that home. And that would, we've put that policy to Treasury, it would raise about four or five billion quid a year. It'd make the kind of investment case a little bit less attractive for overseas investors, and make it a little bit easier for our young people and people who want to get in the housing ladder or want to rent something a little bit easier and raise about four or five billion quid a year in the process. So I think we should look at that and make it less attractive for people to do that who live overseas. Just a final point, somebody made the point, is it about, okay, kind of, is it about monopolistic a small number of people that own all the land in the UK with stocks, land being developed? That's been looked at time and time again, land banking or other kind of dominance that stops this land being developed. That's not it, it's absolutely not it. The reason there is a shortage of homes in this country is a scarcity of land, available land because of planning restrictions, that's it. And so we need to, there's no shortage in my areas or around the country of people who will sell land if they can get planning consent on it, but that's the difficulty and that's because we put restrictions on where we allow development and then the planning process is too slow. We need to properly professionalize, invest in the capability and the capacity of our planning departments to be able to get this stuff through the process, make it easier and cheaper to get, to build good quality homes to provide for the people who need them whilst to still continue those interventions in terms of government support for things like social housing. Thanks, Kevin. And I'm very pleased to hear we're nudging you towards supporting the Bank of England having a sustainable house price handy. Any final thoughts from Laurie and Dinesha on the report, the poll or anything else? And then I'm just gonna finish by sharing a few other thoughts from audience members but we're running out of time so I don't wanna pose any more questions to you. Yeah, Laurie or Dinesha, happy not to come in. Okay, well, I'll just move towards closing then because we've just got so many fantastic questions coming in which we just don't have time to answer. But yeah, thank you for submitting them all in terms of the comments on the kind of UK addiction to house price rises from Chris Todd Hunter and somebody else I've lost it now saying that is the UK just addicted to high house prices and we have this kind of phrase that our home is our castle. I think what we're trying to do today with the polling is show that we think that that's breaking. There's been a lot of questions on QE on the interest of current versus aspiring homeowners and house building, mortgage lending. I really appreciate the conversation that's been going on outside and I appreciate we haven't had time to answer all these fantastic questions but please do carry on the conversation. I wanna thank everyone for joining us online both Facebook Live and also in this webinar are excellent report authors and excellent panelist MPs and audience. I'd like to also thank our excellent funders for this project, The Trust for London without which we couldn't have done any of this work and also the positive money team working so hard for this event getting the message out about the housing crisis. We have a video alongside the report which we're keen to share which I'll put in the chat which you should be able to share and also please do read the report. There are so many great renters unions out there now we're keen to encourage people to look at joining yours or your local housing campaign and as ever we do need grassroots people powered a grassroots people powered movement if we're gonna create real long lasting and systemic change. So thanks everyone once again for joining us and please do carry on the conversation. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Bye.