SIR – David Cameron clearly does not understand money. In 1971, I bought a small London maisonette near Hither Green station.

I was 22-years-old. I saved a five per cent deposit and the building society lent me the rest, which was three times my salary. I was on the ladder.

How could this be so? It was before the Government interfered with banking and markets.

Now they suppress interest rates, print money in enormous quantities which has caused house price inflation. No-one in London can afford a house.

In 1971, savers and borrowers were balanced, a fair rate of interest for them both. The Government’s Help to Buy scheme has been manufactured in response, as usual, to a problem of the Government’s own making. It is not a market failure, it is the result of not letting the market work.

Godfrey Bloom, MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire