George Osborne is under pressure from Chancellors past, as well as current economic experts to reign in his Help to Buy scheme, because of worries that it is endangering the housing market substantially.

Lord Lamont, Lord Lawson and Alistair Darling have all expressed worries about the second part of the Help to Buy scheme that could very well inflate a housing bubble with the 95% loan to value mortgage that it offers.

Lamont said “What will happen is that demand can be increased quickly, through measures like Help to Buy, but supply can only be increased slowly.”

As rising demand outstrips the availability of homes for sale, prices will rocket.

However, Help to Buy is only meant to be a temporary scheme, but some critics have drawn parallels between it and some ‘temporary’ schemes in the U.S.A that were around before the Great Depression. There are further fears that the temporary Help to Buy will become a permanent fixture, difficult to remove from the housing market. After all, the first part of the scheme has already been extended once.

Lord Lawson would like to see the scheme cut in London and have the maximum house price that can qualify reduced by half from £600,000 to £300,000. Ed Balls instead suggests cutting the available price to £400,000.

Help to Buy continues to be controversial, and potentially dangerous. Osborne is stubbornly sticking to his scheme and hasn’t budged so far, so hopefully supply for homes will catch up and stop the economy crumbling around us for the second time this century.