A survey of more than 2,000 adults in Britain by consumer group Which? has indicated that politicians, journalists, bankers and estate agents are the least trusted people in the country.

Only 7% of us trust politicians and journalists, and just 11% trust bankers and estate agents. Trust in the medical profession was the highest with nurses topping the poll at 82% and doctors just behind at 80%. Other results were teachers at 69%, engineers at 56%, lawyers at 35% and accountants at 29%.

Reasons for most of the lowest trust figures are not too hard to find, with the expenses-fiddling, U-turns and hypocrisy of MPs, the dearth of ethics and morals and the unsavoury relationships with the police and politicians amongst journalists, and the greed, dishonesty and arrogance of bankers all making significant and obvious contributions to the destruction of trust.

The low scoring of estate agents, however is harder to explain, since there have been no well-publicised reasons why we shouldn’t trust them. It can only be concluded, therefore, that there are lots of us, nearly 90% on the above figure, who have had bad personal experience of being let down.