The Lib Dems will build 300,000 homes a year, including ten new ‘garden cities’, says the party’s manifesto.

Nick Clegg’s party also pledged a rent to own scheme, where monthly rental payments build up a stake in the home.

A help to rent scheme would lend would-be tenants money for a rental deposit, to help them get a place of their own.

Like Labour, the Lib Dems are firmly committed to introducing a Mansion Tax on homes worth £2m and more. They believe this would raise £1bn when the tax is first introduced, in 2017/18.

The Lib Dems do not expect to win the election, Nick Clegg said, but they do rather expect to be part of a coalition with either the Conservatives or Labour.

UKIP has also published its manifesto, emphasising that it will protect the countryside from building and abolish the National Planning Policy Framework, which it describes as a disaster for the environment, giving developers the green light to build just about anywhere. It wants an audit and register of brownfield sites.

UKIP would allow mortgages to become inheritable, in turn allowing lenders to resume lending to older borrowers.

UKIP would keep Right to Buy and Help to Buy going, but would not allow non-British nationals access to the schemes unless they had served in Her Majesty’s armed forces. Nor would foreign nationals have access to social housing until they had lived in the UK and paid tax and national insurance for at least five years.