Research Director Sam Bowman's comments on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's new report - which projects real private sector rents to rise by 90% between 2006 and 2040 - were picked up by the Press Association and featured in over 50 publications.

Sam Bowman, research director of the Adam Smith Institute, said the report gave a "worrying prognosis" of the future for Britain's renters, adding: "It should be a wake-up call to anyone interested in fighting poverty in Britain.

"But the report's solutions, which focus on the construction of new social housing, are to some extent just a sticking-plaster.

"Building more social housing will do nothing for first-time buyers or private renters and will simply shift the rising cost of housing from some tenants to taxpayers in general.

"This is not sustainable: we need to make all housing cheaper by making it easier for the private sector to build new homes."