HOWZAT

While both are proceeding well and will be thorough, few expect them to solve the problem of Britain’s volatile housing market. The Miles review is likely to point out that any shift towards more fixed-rate mortgages would still leave people the option of re-mortgaging, and taking advantage of lower interest rates, as in America.

Barker is likely to recommend liberalising the planning system, which would then come up against the age-old political problem of nimby (“not in my back yard”) attitudes to new housing development.

That leaves tax. Since 1997 Brown has trebled the take on the most direct tax on housing, stamp duty. The duty on houses trading for more than £250,000 has gone up to 3%, and on those above £500,000 to 4%. By riding the boom, the Treasury, which took £1.49 billion in stamp duty in 1997-8, received just over £5 billion last year.

Even that may only have scratched the surface. Two Treasury views were tucked away in the studies that accompanied the government’s “not yet” decision on euro entry in the summer. The first is that housing in Britain is undertaxed compared with most other European countries. The second is that variations in tax are a good way of preventing boom (and the risk of subsequent bust) in the housing market.

Higher taxes on housing, which economists would rightly regard as damaging for their effect on labour mobility, could even be presented as good for the economy and beneficial for everybody, particularly first-time buyers. By eliminating housing booms through taxes, interest rates could be lower for industry. I can almost hear the chancellor saying it.

What kind of new taxes? Increasing stamp duty to 2% or 3% on properties below £250,000, and more for those above it, would raise several billion pounds and leave transaction taxes on housing well below those in most of the rest of Europe. There the equivalent of stamp duty can be as high as 10% or 12%.

A more radical move would be to use capital gains tax (CGT). An Englishman’s home is his castle, and part of his birthright has been the ability to sell it — if it is his main residence — without tax on the profits. Other countries, as the Treasury pointed out, take a different view.

Sweden imposes CGT on main residences, and Germany does so on properties sold within 10 years of purchase, to curb property speculation. Finland has different rates of CGT depending on how long a property has been owned.

Another possibility would be a Danish-style property tax, says Professor John Muellbauer of Nuffield College, Oxford, who has advised the Treasury on the housing market.

A 1% tax on the market value of housing would be progressive — those living in expensive homes would pay the most — and kill two birds with one stone. It could replace council tax and still leave a lot of money to spare for the Treasury, and would rise only in line with the housing market.

Will any of this happen? Politically, higher taxes on housing, particularly CGT, would be dynamite. Many people, particularly in the south-east, have felt the burden of higher stamp duty acutely. A property tax could dwarf the political outcry over council tax bills.

The Treasury’s official line is that the public finances are in good shape and no new taxes are needed. Privately, many officials see housing as the next obvious revenue source. But to persuade people to accept higher housing taxes, the Treasury would first have to persuade them that rising house prices are bad.

PS Returning to those GDP statistics, which were heavily affected by revised figures for the construction industry, it seems my skip index — measuring economic activity by the number of builders’ skips in my street — was even more relevant than I’d thought.

One reader has what sounds like a good alternative: the number of motorists turning up at Kwik-Fit and other tyre centres to have punctures fixed. Apparently most punctures are still caused by nails, most of which are left on the roads by builders. The busier they are, the more nails and punctures.

Informal indicators can be tremendously useful. When Sir Alan Budd was the government’s chief economic adviser, he used to gauge the strength of spending by counting the number of bags carried by shoppers. Now there are sophisticated “footfall” and retail traffic measures. Gordon Brown doubtless keeps an eye on the number of passengers on the London-Edinburgh shuttle, another trusty indicator.

There should be more. Readers’ responses to my request for examples of ludicrous economic claims are still piling up. There have been so many such claims during the party conference season, however, that this is not the time.

There is a pressing need, though, to help out the Office for National Statistics, which had another good kicking last week, in its hour of need. Don’t send money, if only because there’s a good chance they’d lose it. Do send examples of unconventional but apparently reliable economic indicators; anything from skirt lengths to the size of popcorn cartons in cinemas. I can’t wait.