The lukewarm response to the measures to stimulate the housing market must have caused even the usually relentlessly perky Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, to sigh a little.

But this lack of enthusiasm, even for the stamp duty concession, should have been expected: most people know that, for as long as mortgages remain difficult to obtain, any incentives to climb on the housing ladder are just “sticking plaster”.

This was the term frequently used yesterday to summarise the various proposals. For, despite the upbeat tone of the announcements, there is little more reason today than yesterday to make a commitment to the purchase of a home.

Ministers may have seemed in happy accord around the Cabinet table, but the events of recent days indicate they are divided on the outlook for the economy.

Times Archive, 1983: Chancellor considers options for reducing burden

Stamp duty as it is now applied is unfair because it produces large jumps in taxation as the cost of a property crosses a threshold

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Even for first-time buyers prepared to take a gamble on further falls in prices, home ownership remains a distant prospect while they are compelled to produce a deposit of 15 or even 20 per cent in some cases.

The most positive verdict was that this was “a step in the right direction”, an acknowledgement of the help for families facing repossession and the Government's readiness to share in the risk of home ownership.

Anyone whose household income is under £60,000 will be able to get an interest-free loan of 30 per cent of the value of a new-build property - which means, in effect, as Lucian Cook, of Savills, explains, some protection against a further decline in prices. In five years' time, moreover, recovery should be well under way in most parts of Britain. But the lack of any specific detail on this scheme provoked widespread suspicion that this would be yet another inadequately funded shared equity arrangement open to a very restricted clientele.

Ministers may deplore this cynicism - but they are to blame for having so many times promised so much and delivered so little. The stamp duty concession is a case in point. Only buyers of homes under £175,000 will benefit, but some government briefings in early

August suggested that there would be a total exemption and, indeed, even a total reform of the unfair workings of this tax - a disingenuous strategy that aggravated the slowdown, as some buyers of a Pollyanna persuasion were convinced that the Chancellor would be bounteous.

News of the limited concession did boost, by 10 per cent, the number of searches on Rightmove, the property website. But this may reflect only the eagerness of certain buy-to-let investors to snap up a bargain, with the added bonus of a tax break.

They may be thwarted in this aspiration; some estate agents believe that the tax holiday will not increase the number of transactions. Flexibility on asking price is at present the best way to secure a sale, but agents (people versed in the often perverse pyschology of homeowners) suspect that some sellers will be reluctant to accept a lower price from a purchaser who is already lucky enough to be enjoying a tax break.

The measures will spare a few families the misery and humiliation of repossession. This will give at least a temporary glow of satisfaction to the hard-pressed taxpayers who will have to foot the considerable bill for this munificence - but this will be the extent of the feelgood factor.