Even as another embattled British builder, Bovis, pleads for greater intervention to support the UK mortgage market, where new loan approvals are down 65 per cent versus a year ago, the European Central Bank is looking nervously at the support it has provided the sector.

The eurozone mortgage-backed bond market and the banks who rely on it are braced for some potentially harsh medicine following more, stronger hints from governors of the ECB about some form of crackdown on banks’ use of its liquidity facilities.