I HEARD a bloke on the radio talking housing. He was the chief executive of one of the big national housebuilders.

The company is in the FTSE 100 and he’s been running it for 17 years. There’s a problem with first-time buyers unable to get on to the property ladder. It’s all about affordability.

The interviewer was typically deferential, and the same old myths were trotted out. Planning regulations are holding us back, the government needs to pump more public money into the system.

I may have missed it, I was driving, but there were no questions about the 100,000s of houses with planning permission not being built.

Or that by pumping billions of taxpayers’ money into the housing market, the government would be fanning the flames of house price inflation.

Why oh why have successive governments continued to believe that this skewered market will deliver the solutions to our housing needs?

One reason may well be the millions housebuilders pay to government to make the “right decisions”.

Executives aren’t paid on whether they’re solving the housing crisis, it’s the share price that matters to them. If house prices are held at unsustainably high levels with taxpayer subsidy, the developers are laughing all the way to the bank.

The irony is, if housebuilding was a genuine free market it would collapse in its current state.

As the chief executive said, first-time buyers can’t buy. The bottom layer of the pyramid is disappearing.

In short, houses cost more to build than people can afford to pay. The market is broken.

But when big house builders can’t sell, along comes government in the form of Homes England to bail them out. And so, the failing system is sustained, and our housing crisis deepens.

And what does the secretary of state do? He jumps around in a ridiculous Trumpesque performance, chanting the mantra “build baby build” as if that’s going to make any difference. Pathetic.

Why not let the big developers fail, nationalise them, and then get back to building council housing. That’s what we did after the Second World War.

Houses were built to solve a need, not service private greed. Don’t hold your breath, corporate Britain will circle the wagons, scaremongering, telling us the economy will collapse and pensions will fall.

Just look at the water companies. We need to bring corporate Britain to heel.

The failing housing market has deep and wide economic and social consequences. We must not allow the developers to dictate policy.

The removal of local councillors from planning decision-making is a disgrace and yet that is what government is intending to do this autumn.

The devolution agenda we were promised is turning out to be anything but.

Huge decisions will be taken by faceless officials with government claiming it’s to help solve our housing issues. All the while economic growth is stymied by a lack of genuinely affordable housing.

More money is not always the answer, especially if that involves pumping public, taxpayers’ money into private hands.