One week into Labour Party Conference and we have seen yet more evidence that this Government has no serious answer to Britain’s housing crisis.

It cannot build the homes it promised. It is making it easier for people to take on more debt to buy the homes that do exist. And now it plans to create new powers to seize privately owned homes.

This is not a housing strategy. It is a Government chasing headlines while failing to address the fundamental problem: we do not have enough homes, in the right places, with the infrastructure to support them.

Last July, long before Labour finally admitted there is only a “slim chance” of meeting its 1.5 million homes target, I told The Herald that its ‘Freedom to Buy’ policy was a huge gamble.

Making it easier for people to borrow money, backed by the taxpayer, does not solve a shortage of homes. It risks increasing demand without addressing supply, leaving heavily indebted new homeowners exposed to market volatility.

Ten months later, I wrote again about the lack of meaningful progress in housebuilding across Britain and how homeownership was increasingly becoming a fantasy for many, while Labour insisted this was not happening thanks to the imaginary houses it was building at such ‘record’ pace.

Then, last week, came the inevitable admission that the 1.5 million target was slipping away.

After months of Labour giving people false hope about how many homes it would build, Angela Rayner effectively abandoned the promise. All the Government has achieved is a destabilised planning system, allowing development in places people do not necessarily want and without infrastructure communities need. I set out the Conservative alternative last week: genuine planning reform alongside the infrastructure needed to make development work.

So what did Labour do this week? The Prime Minister announced on Saturday his new debt-subsidy scheme, ‘Your First Home’, which ties lower mortgage deposits on new-build houses to even more taxpayer-backed loans, with the latter accruing interest after five years.

Once again, Labour is trying to solve a supply problem by subsidising demand.

There is nothing wrong with helping people onto the housing ladder. But if there are not enough homes in the places people want to live, more taxpayer-backed debt does not magically create them. No amount of Government finance can make an unwanted development desirable.

Then came Sunday’s announcement: making it easier to seize your home if it has been unoccupied for just six months.

This is a worrying, authoritarian attack on private property rights. It shows a Government that cannot solve the supply problem, so instead is looking for ways to interfere with what already exists.

There are thousands of empty homes across England, including many properties owned by councils and housing associations. Perhaps Labour should look there before eyeing up private property.

I said last week: Labour will not make the decisions needed to build the homes we need, but seems happy to find new ways to tax those who already own one.

Now, it seems, they want to take it off you too.