Britain is not just in the grip of a cost of living crisis. It’s facing a housing crisis too.

News that  the economy is in recovery will come as a surprise to the nine million Britons who are shut out of the housing market by the relentless upward march of house prices.

Britain is not just in the grip of a cost of living crisis. It’s facing a housing crisis too.

This Government has failed to address the problem. David Cameron has presided over the lowest level of homes built of any prime minister in peacetime since the 1920s.In my constituency, hundreds of young people who work hard want nothing more than what their parents had: a comfortable family home; a holiday once a year; and a secure retirement. These modest aspirations are beyond their reach in David Cameron’s race-to-the-bottom society.

Depriving people of these basic aspirations is not just an accident of Cameron’s economic policy.

It is his economic policy. He believes that the yardstick by which an economic recovery is measured is what multinational companies return to their shareholders. That means forcing down wages and living standards for working people. His vision of Britain’s future is one of zero hours contracts and short-term leases; falling wages and rising rents; shady employers and dodgy land lords.

Labour does not accept these low aspirations for Britain. We are determined to build a better Britain, and that starts with housing.

To keep up with demand, we will need 200,000 new homes built each year of the next Parliament and that means clearing the obstacles facing communities who want to grow,

First, we need to make sure that developers who buy land actually build on it. Too many developers are just letting the land they have bought lie idle, speculating that prices will go up even further. We can stop this “land hoarding” by giving councils robust powers to buy, assemble and grant planning permission on land that is being hoarded and holding back development. Ed Miliband”s message to property developers is clear: “Either use the land or lose the land.”

Secondly, we need to give communities that want to grow the right to do so. Often, when a council wants to build more houses to meet rising demand but would have to build on land just outside the local authority boundary, the neighbouring authorities block them. This happened recently in Stevenage, where the building of 10,000 new homes had to be abandoned when North Hertfordshire council withdrew its co-operation. This problem could be resolved if councils who want to grow are given “right to grow status” that would fast track their house-building plans and require neighbouring authorities to work through their disagreements.

Labour is also committed to building the next generation of new towns and garden cities. This is something that the Government has promised to do but failed to deliver. A future Labour government would set out a whole range of freedoms and financial incentives to areas identified as possible sites for new towns and would legislate to fast-track their construction.

My inspiration in politics has always been the post-war Labour government of Clement Attlee and its determination to give working Britons the healthcare, housing and safety nets that they deserved.

The scale of our house building plans to build a better Britain shows that One Nation Labour is keeping Attlee’s vision alive by fighting for the working people who will help Britain win a race to the top.

Julie Hilling is the Labour MP for Bolton West