• COUNCILLOR Raphael Andrews correctly identifies the futility of the Conservatives’ current tinkering with the housing market (Housing crisis needs more than fig leaf, October 13).

Housing provision in the UK requires wholesale reform – along with the utilities, health and transport – but none of these reforms will work without changing the way that new money is created.

There is indeed no “magic money tree” but if, encouraged by this discovery, Theresa May was to follow Jack up the beanstalk she would find not an ogre in his castle counting his gold but bean-counters in their banks creating the vast majority of our new money as debt – only a tiny percentage of which is used to finance industry.

Our money, as distinct from wealth, is intrinsically worthless, relying entirely on the backing of the UK government for its exchange value. Mainstream UK banks similarly rely on the backing of the government that provided the legal bail-outs following the 2007-8 collapse.

Government should choke off the lending powers of those banks, and progressively print a corresponding quantity of money, through the Bank of England, to be spent by the various ministries on the infrastructure and services that we actually need – including the building of council houses.

There would be no immediate stimulus to the housing market but money being created as wages would enable home ownership to recover in time whereas placing the emphasis on funding through unsustainable mortgage debt is only leading to its decline.

CHRIS GRAHAM
Tollington Park, N4