How does the housing crisis threaten a Tory government, and how can they fix it?

In Britain today, home ownership rates stand at a 30-year low. More and more families with young children are renting, while recent research from the Resolution Foundation found that one in three millennials are unlikely to ever own their own home. At the same time, Britain ranks fifth on infrastructure spending when compared to its G7 counterparts. How can the government solve problems in housing and infrastructure, and how can the private sector help in the fix? M&G Prudential brought together a group of politicians, economists and fund managers to determine the strategy, going ahead, at a recent Spectator roundtable.

Fraser Nelson, Editor of the Spectator, chaired the roundtable. He kicked off the discussion by picking up on one of the reasons for a tight housing supply – less than ideal private investment in infrastructure and housing. With the FTSE generally healthy, why were private investors not investing more? For Simon Pilcher, CEO of Fixed Income at M&G Investments, the asset management arm of M&G Prudential, a lack of certainty on returns is the main reason.