Mr. Vasileios Madouros:

The challenges with regard to housing in particular are very real, especially for younger people. Underpinning this is the continued imbalance between the demand for places to live and the supply of places to live, whether to own or to rent. We see this in house prices and rents increasing very quickly. This points to the underlying imbalance between demand and supply for housing.

In the context of ability to access mortgages, we have the mortgage rules that have been in place. They have been particularly important in ensuring we do not have another feedback loop between credit and house prices, which could make things worse both for those trying to enter the housing market but also for the economy as a whole. This has been a key policy measure we have had for the past seven years. We did an in-depth review of these measures, which concluded last year, and we made some very targeted amendments because we very much recognise they entail significant benefits for the economy as a whole but they also entail costs. We always balance the costs and benefits of our policy interventions. They are very important to make sure we have sustainable lending standards and we do not have adverse feedback loops between credit and house prices and ultimately we do not end up in a situation where we might have housing supply that is based on unsustainable lending standards and then collapses again. No one in this country wants that. That does mean that, in the context of what we are seeing at the moment of increasing costs of construction, there are potential issues around constraints in the supply of housing. The solution to these issues is to focus very much on different dimensions of housing supply. My colleagues might have something to add to this.