SIR – As Kris Hopkins MP has said in a recent written answer to the House of Commons, in his position as Minister for Housing at the DCLG, it is not possible to produce a list and to be able to analyse the number of new house building start-ups by a constituency.

So we are unable to easily consider whether the Government-backed mortgage scheme for first-time buyers has been working in Keighley and Ilkley. Although anecdotal evidence would say that it has not worked.

The Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, has recommended to Chancellor George Osborne that the mortgage scheme be abandoned as a “housing price bubble” has been seen to emerging in London and south-east of Britain. A figure of a rise of 6.5 per cent has been mentioned. However, no such inflation has been observed in Yorkshire, to my own knowledge.

Surely we need at least 200,000 new homes built every year?

I am sure that Mr Hopkins is sincere in his wish to improve the new home housing market. But how does halting the state-backed mortgage scheme help in this objective?

Is this not a ‘chicken and egg dilemma’? Without a demand for new homes by those who can afford them, won’t the new-build programme stall for houses?

Paul Latham, PPC Keighley and Ilkley Constituency, UK Independence Party