John Worrall, Ed Brierley and Will Wright respond to an article by Kirsty Major on the struggles many face to climb the property ladder

Kirsty Major (Meet the young families stuck in their starter homes thanks to the UK housing crisis, 3 January) describes a financialised housing market in which a decade and a half of interest rates close to zero, along with George Osborne’s outrageous help-to-buy policy, pushed prices from a mortgageable three or four times average earnings to more than nine times. It is now one where those with inherited property wealth or the Bank of Mum and Dad (the UK’s sixth largest lender) might compete, but those without mostly cannot. And so the social divide widens.

But then Keir Starmer says he will back “the builders not the blockers”, implying that supply will fix affordability. That would need developers to increase it to the point where they had to drop prices and then keep building – and incurring losses – while prices continued to fall. Obviously they won’t do it. It is deeply concerning that Starmer and Angela Rayner don’t acknowledge that.