Your newspaper reports David Cameron’s visit to Barnet in which he alludes to “the high-spending, high-taxing and high-borrowing past” (Prime Minister discusses issues affecting borough’, Times Series, July 31).

The problem is that the PM does not refer to what sort of spending, what sort of taxation and what sort of borrowing now applies.

Londoners are having to spend obscene amounts on housing, which operates in a completely unfettered free-market.

We now pay far more on indirect taxes such as VAT than we used to but the right wing invariably mean tax to mean income tax.

Private borrowing has been encouraged over the years in order to fund the consumption of cheap imported goods at the same time as British manufacturing has been allowed to decline and management allowed to outsource to parts of the world where labour is far cheaper.

The Great Crash of 2008, which originated in the USA, was a result of speculation. British Government action stopped peoples’ savings in banks becoming worthless. That was the cause of the great majority of Government debt, despite the coalition’s much-repeated claims.

This Government’s policies have meant that ‘recovery’ is at least two years behind schedule. Such recovery as there has been is largely limited to the south-east and dependent upon the very same house price inflation, which has put home-ownership beyond a generation.

More than a quarter of people living in London (including Barnet) are now in private-rented homes. These people deserve rents that are stabilised. If rents were to be lowered the cost of housing would fall. Good for individuals and also the economy. Far too much of the country’s income is spent on unproductive housing. The vast amounts of interest being paid on houses built in, say, the 1930s does nothing for the economy or for jobs. If people didn’t have to spend so much on housing they could buy goods and services and boost the economy.

In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that Mr Cameron’s visit wasn’t trumpeted in advance.

After all he would hardly be able to explain to the public why the Conservative Party was still the party in favour of a ‘property-owning democracy’.

David Beere

Colin Crescent, Colindale