The chair of NatWest has claimed it is not “that difficult” to get on the property ladder, despite the number of first-time buyers with a mortgage falling to the lowest level in a decade.

“I don’t think it is that difficult at the moment,” Sir Howard Davies told the BBC.

Pressed about this assertion, he added: “You have to save, and that is the way it always used to be.”

His comments to Radio 4’s Today programme follow a report published earlier this week by Yorkshire Building Society, which found that the number of first-time buyers who bought a home with a mortgage fell to the lowest level in a decade in 2023.