Evening Standard comment: The capital urgently needs more homes

It is a measure of the increased urgency of housing as a political issue that it should be fuelling tension in the Coalition’s Cabinet, as revealed today by Nick Clegg. The Deputy Prime Minister worries that by making it easier to get larger mortgages again, the Chancellor’s flagship Help-to-Buy scheme will fuel a new housing bubble: if that bursts, he warns of “awful consequences”. He argues that it would be “real folly” to encourage demand without also increasing the supply by building more.

Mr Clegg is right to be concerned about the possible effects of the scheme — but even more so to emphasise the need to build more. London house prices are now rising at six per cent a year, far ahead of salaries, putting home ownership out of reach of more and more Londoners: figures released earlier this year show that for the first time in decades, the number of renters overtook homeowners in the capital. The only solution, especially in view of foreign demand, is to build more.

At the same time we should be realistic about the Chancellor’s strategy: while it carries risks, relatively few other options for growth remain to him at this point without spending more money. It is worrying that our recovery should be so dependent on the property sector, a reliance that fed the last crisis. Yet in the absence of any significant rebalancing of the economy towards manufacturing, whatever ministers’ warm words, we need the property and financial sectors to restore growth. And if that were combined with significant growth in homebuilding, it would meet an urgent need in London.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has today cautiously supported calls for a public inquiry into allegations that undercover officers tried to smear the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. The story has sparked outrage, coming in the wake of claims about other past undercover operations: last week it was reported that one officer was deeply involved in the environmental group sued in the notorious “McLibel” trial. Today it is also claimed that undercover officers infiltrated a group fighting police corruption. But the Lawrence allegations are by far the most serious: this was the most controversial murder case of the Nineties. If the claims are true, those responsible acted disgracefully. There are clear questions about who authorised such operations. And like infiltration of peaceful green groups, this was a waste of public money.

Nevertheless, Sir Bernard is right to warn that an inquiry could be lengthy and inconclusive. The recent crop of public inquiries into wrongdoing in various areas of public life have all been inordinately expensive and their end results, in terms of changes to current policy, minimal. Against such concerns must be balanced the justifiable public perception that individual officers get away with too much, such as the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in 2009. Sir Bernard must show that his force is accountable — but not allow it to get too caught up in examining the rights and wrongs of distant decisions.

Today’s inaugural £1 million Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering not only honours five visionary engineers, including the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. It also highlights Britain’s huge continuing role in engineering and science: we punch above our weight in innovation. Engineering changes the world: we should celebrate our leading part in that.