Conservative party leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak says he wants today’s renters, along with young adults obliged to live at home with their parents, to become capitalists – and that means getting their hands on capital in the form of home ownership.

He told Sky News over the weekend: “We are the standard bearers for capitalism. But we can’t expect future generations to share our belief in capitalism if they can’t get their hands on capital. That’s why I’ll do whatever it takes to build affordable, plentiful housing, building the next generation of Conservative voters.”

The former Chancellor wants developers to finish a project before they can be granted new planning permission for other plots in the same local area, while local authorities will have greater compulsory purchase powers to buy undeveloped land at a discount if it has not been built on within an agreed time frame.

To avoid existing communities having too many new homes without appropriate local facilities, he has also pledged a new ‘infrastructure first guarantee’, which aims to ensure all new homes are supported by enough local doctors, schools and roads.

In the same debate his rival for the leadership, Liz Truss, said her way of making housing more affordable for young buyers would be to allow a history of paying rent on time to be used to help secure a mortgage.

Truss said she would amend the current Levelling Up Bill to replace centralised housing targets with tax cuts and reduce red tape in ‘opportunity zones’ to make it easier and quicker for developers to build on brownfield land in order ”to get our economy moving.”

Government figures suggest that more than half of today’s renters could in fact afford the monthly cost of a mortgage, but securing a deposit and a mortgage are larger obstacles. 

Earlier this year a YouGov poll found that 76 per cent back the idea of lenders accepting a history of regular rent payments as proof of affordability when it comes to applying for a mortgage.