Not in the building that is here now clearly. The original went with the Great Fire of London in 1666, but the current building shares the same site and I was sitting where Sam would have sat.
Not that he’d be drinking a latte, I imagine.
Amongst Sam’s main tribulations as chief secretary to the Admiralty was getting the powers that be to take seriously the issues that faced the Navy.
In particular, the need to keep the ships equipped and pay the crews from time to time to ensure we could beat the Dutch at sea – something that was never a foregone conclusion.
However, when the country did finally take the matter seriously, it moved in unison. Crown, Exchequer and the Navy Board, all agreed to take action.
We seem to have lost that now.
Back in the 1920s, with the “Homes fit for Heroes” building programme, or even in the1960s, when the country faced a housing crisis, it seemed to have pulled together – government, builders, planners and lenders.
But now, we seem to have organisations pulling in different directions.
Government, in the form of the Housing Minister, is clearly concerned about the difficulties faced by first-time buyers. Yet, government in the form of the Chancellor and the City Minister clearly did not feel sufficiently concerned about mortgage lending to include it in the promises the extracted from the banks under Project Merlin.
Housebuilders are at loggerheads with the planners over the new planning rules and the localism agenda. And lenders have seemingly forgotten the benefits to themselves and their customers that can happen when they act positively in concert rather than taking an “every man for himself” approach.
Back in the days of the so-called Building Societies Cartel led by Abbey National, which came to an end in 1983, the main lenders would seek to act in concert on major issues such as on interest rates and on lending criteria.
It is worth remembering that even in the depths of the 1990s housing downturn, mortgages remained available at 95%. My recollection of those times is that the main lenders acknowledged they owed it to the overall industry not to pull the rug away from under the market and precipitate further house price falls.
How different things have been this time around.
The problems are made more difficult by yet more institutions that have set or are setting capital requirements for lenders, which have resulted in depressed levels of the desperately needed loans at higher loan to values.
No concerted action. What would Sam have thought?
Stephen Smith is director of housing at Legal & General
