Oxfordshire MP Boris Johnson has appealed to the Government to make radical changes in housing policy to ensure that there are more affordable homes for key workers in the county without destroying valuable Green Belt countryside.

The Henley Tory MP said in a special House of Commons debate yesterday that the biggest single problem in the county was too little accommodation for public service workers such as nurses and policemen. He said that between 1997 and 2002 house prices in his constituency rose by 123 per cent to £400,000 or more. That meant nurses on a salary of about £23,000 had to find 10 times their salary to buy a home.

Mr Johnson said too many decisions on housing in the county were being taken in Whitehall or at regional level.

He added: "Week in, week out, I meet people in my advice surgery who have lived in south Oxfordshire all their lives, and especially in Henley, who weep with frustration because they cannot find anywhere to live."

He appealed for the Government to widen the definition of key worker to cover low paid people in the private sector, and to reverse its cut in grants for social housing and cheap private homes.