the dailymash

Chief secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper, said she wanted the banks to think of their customers as delicate flowers that need to be nurtured or they could lose all their lovely petals and die.

She added: "Stop taking people's houses away. It's, like, where they live, you know?

"So what if they signed a legally binding contract agreeing to pay you without fail every month? Why are you so obsessed with money? It's really ugly and it makes me not want to be around you."

Dr Roy Hobbs, an economist at Leeds University, said: "I am slightly concerned the second-in-command at the Treasury does not appear to know what mortgage lenders actually do.

"Unless they are able to collect money every month from the mortgage holders and, if necessary, repossess the house in order to recover the loan, they're really nothing more than some headed notepaper and a lot of people sitting around playing Tetris."

Cooper insisted: "We all need to recalibrate our humanity. Property is just a state of mind."

A spokesman for the Royal Bank of Scotland said: "No it's not."