Home-ownership is a healthy obsession, we just need to make it easier for people to buy

When I was a child a woman visited our home every Friday night. My mother gave her money fresh from my father’s pay packet and the woman, smiling, wrote in small neat handwriting in a little book. This was how my parents bought their modest terrace home in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

They never had the income or acumen to get a mortgage. They bought their home in a private arrangement from well-off sisters, one of whom was this kindly woman calling for their dues.

My parents were hand-to-mouth poor, but they felt better off than people in council houses living under the Town Hall diktat. At least they could paint their front door any colour – even if they could not afford the paint.

No doubt many council tenants in turn sneered at private renters who, in my part of the world, lived in slums.

These days, as more council homes are sold than built, my parents would probably have had to rent.