IEA Communications Officer Harrison Griffiths has written in The Critic arguing that control over too many important decisions about peoples’ lives are still taken by government, betraying the promise to ‘take back control’ if we voted to leave the European Union in 2016.

Harrison wrote:

“If you, like me, are a young person who doesn’t feel in control of whether they will be able to buy a home, you should demand answers from Westminster and local governments. Through imposing an absurdly burdensome planning system on us, they have deprived us of the right to build and replaced it with a right to object. Older generations, who were able to buy houses at the price of three or four times the average salary, are empowered by the state to protect the value of their home by vetoing attempts to build yours. That is, in large part, why the average house now costs 9.1 times the average salary, because the government has control, not us.

“Because of the decision to leave the EU in 2016, there are no more Brussels bureaucrats to hide behind. If you are still frustrated by the fact that bureaucrats and ivory tower politicians seem to have more control than you do, the only place to look is Westminster. The buck stops there.”

Read Harrison’s full piece here.