Stamp Duty Land Tax (Reduction) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Peter Bone

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention. It comes down to how we define, “levelling up”. The point I am trying to make is that, if somebody is buying an average house in Christchurch, or in her constituency of Louth and Horncastle, it should not make any difference in terms of taxation whether the house is going to cost £405,000 or £200,000. Why should the person buying a house in Christchurch who wants to become a teacher or an NHS employee in the area not only have the burden of having the higher house price—she has referred to some of those issues—but have to pay £10,000 in SDLT for the privilege of moving into the Christchurch constituency to purchase an average-priced house? I do not see any justice in that at all. In levelling up, we should be putting those two categories of person on the same level when it comes to their liability for paying transaction taxes.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet made the suggestion, which I have also made, that we should scrap SDLT. If we want to have a transaction tax, we should introduce one based on, for example, the size of a property, because that would be neutral; it would really be levelling up across the country. Obviously, it would be more popular with some people than with others, but it would certainly be very popular with my constituents and it would meet the criterion of levelling up.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It might be very popular in Christchurch, but it would be very unpopular in Wellingborough and it seems totally unfair to me.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

This is the challenge, because some people think that this would adversely affect them. When we were looking at whether we should change the domestic rating system, we always faced the problem of the people who were going to be worse off, who were always the losers and who were going to complain. I accept that, were this to be implemented in the way I am canvassing, it would create some losers who would be unpleasantly surprised. That leads me to my belief that SDLT and stamp duty should be abolished altogether. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] That is an issue on which we, as real Conservatives who believe in a homeowning democracy, should be able to agree—and it seems from that response that we can agree on it—rather than dividing again in trying to find an alternative to an already unsatisfactory tax.

Let us remind ourselves that, in the 1980s, when we had the beginnings of the property-owning democracy revolution, with more than 50% of people in the 25 to 34 age group being homeowners, we had a stamp duty regime where the maximum rate to purchase any house was 1%. Since this process started under the Blair Government and continued with the coalition—the Treasury is always seeing this as a cow to be milked for taxpayers’ benefit—the proportion of people able to afford to buy their homes has declined significantly. So the challenge I make to the Government, and I hope the Minister can respond to this, is: if we put stamp duty back to 1% as a maximum, what would that do to increase the number of transactions in the housing market, which, as others have said, is ostensibly the Government’s agenda?

On 23 September, HMRC’s policy paper “Stamp Duty Land Tax Reduction” set out the following policy objective:

“This measure is part of government’s commitment to support homeownership and promote mobility in the housing market, in turn supporting economic growth. Increased property transactions also add to residential investment and spending on durable goods.”

Unfortunately, that was withdrawn on 28 November. It would be interesting to know whether that policy objective has been retained by the Government even though the HMRC policy paper has been withdrawn. Another paper issued on 23 September was “The Growth Plan 2022”, which I thought was great, as did many of my constituents. Paragraph 3.30 of the plan stated that the changes to SDLT would

“take 200,000 homebuyers, including 60,000 first-time buyers, out of SDLT entirely.”

Today, however, we are discussing a proposal by the Government, by way of amendments to the Bill, that would put those 200,000 home buyers, 60,000 of them first-time buyers, back into SDLT. Do we really want to do that? Do we really think it will help to move the housing market, boost growth and help people to have the mobility to get to new jobs?

This is not just about people being able to move to a new job by moving house; we also need to think about the damage to the environment being done by the large number of people who are now, having no alternative, being forced to engage in long-distance commuting. Last week, I visited a school in my constituency. The teacher showing me around has been driving regularly from Wales to do a great teaching job in the Christchurch constituency. Fortunately, she is about to move into the constituency, but that is after many, many months of that long-distance commuting. That is highly undesirable. It is bad for the environment and bad for the people involved, because it means that they are sitting behind the wheel of a car for far too long during the working week.

Stamp duty land tax is targeted against homeowners and it will have an adverse effect on labour mobility. Yet the Prime Minister, in his speech on 4 January, was complaining—I agree with him on this—that a quarter of our country’s labour force is inactive and, in this Bill, he is introducing an additional tax on the very mobility that he should be espousing. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet has said, SDLT is a tax on downsizing: it makes it much more difficult for anyone to receive a significant return by selling a larger house and purchasing a smaller one.

My biggest complaint, though, is that the provision hits hardest those for whom homeownership is least affordable. The latest figures, produced by the House of Commons Library in December, show that, in Christchurch, the average house price is now 11.8 times earnings. The national average in England and Wales of eight times is bad enough, but why are we imposing that extra burden on those buying houses in places such as Christchurch? The latest figures from the 2021 census show that the dream of a homeowning democracy espoused by generations of Conservative politicians since Margaret Thatcher, and first raised in 1975, is not one of this Government’s priorities.

Business of the House Commission Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Peter Bone

Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

The first reason they should do so—in this particular case—is that it is good for them. This change will happen only when there is a Government in crisis, which is why the Wright reforms produced the Backbench Business Committee and the election of Select Committee chairs; they were all magnificent reforms. We now have an opportunity. Some argue—I could not possibly put this forward—that there is a bit of a crisis going on in the Government at the moment. Maybe one reason is that they have taken Parliament for granted. They have not done what they are supposed to do.

Did the Leader of the House suggest earlier this week that we have a presidential system, and there might have to be a general election if there is a change of Prime Minister? Hang on, we do not have a presidential system, and I happen to know that if the President is removed, there is always someone to replace him—there is never an election, so I did not follow that logic. The real issue, which has driven me and many people in the House up the wall, not least Mr Speaker, is the announcement of Government policy to the media first. That is not behaving properly in this House. That is an extremely unsatisfactory state of affairs and it needs to be changed. If Downing Street is in a listening mood at the moment, which I think it may be, it needs to do something and stop that. I do not want to see any reports announced by “Sky News”, rather than by a Minister at that Dispatch Box.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue goes even further than what he is describing, because we have the spectacle today of the Metropolitan police seeking to interfere with the content of Sue Gray’s report on the specious justification that it wishes to prevent prejudice to a criminal investigation, yet the only law on the statute book in relation to prejudicing a criminal investigation relates to proceeds of crime legislation, which is certainly not what we are talking about at the moment?

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I expect that explosions are going off in Downing Street at the fact that the Sue Gray report might be delayed or might never see the light of day. No one has been charged. We do not even know that a crime has been committed, and if it had, it would be something that is subject to a fine.

I appreciate that it is not the Government’s decision in this case, but Sue Gray’s. I would say to the Metropolitan police, “We understand what you are saying and your advice, but we are going to ignore it, because it is in the national interest to publish that report.” I hope that will happen, but it cannot be blamed on the Whips—sorry, I said the Whips by mistake; I normally blame the Whips for everything. It cannot be blamed on the Government.

With this Bill to create the business of the House commission, we can go to where we should have gone before, which is to give Parliament the right to decide on the timetabling of business. It is not right that all the power lies with the Government. We have Backbench Business debates, and hasn’t that Committee worked so well? We have had some really important debates.

I remember David Nuttall proposing that we have a referendum on the European Union back in 2011. The debate was timetabled by the Government for a wet Thursday when no one would be here, they hoped, and then George Osborne said, “No, I’m going to teach those Eurosceptics a lesson. We will bring it forward to the Monday and make it really important.” What happened? Members of this House went back to their constituents. We had a really strong three-line Whip. Whips were threatening careers. They said, “Peter, you will never be a Minister if you support this motion.” Well, they were probably right on that point, although it was not anything to do with that particular vote. Some 81 Conservative MPs voted on a Backbench Business motion that changed the history of this country, because after that, David Cameron realised that we had to have a pledge to have a referendum. The Backbench Business Committee has worked extremely well, but its problem is that it does not know when it will be given the time. Backbench Business time is supposed to be in primetime. That is what the Wright reforms called for.

Going back to my point on the commission, it is not about stopping the Government getting their business through; it is about making sure that we have the time to scrutinise it, so that we will not be forced to debate an important thing in an hour. The commission could decide it will have three, four or six hours of protected time. This mother of Parliaments should decide how things are timetabled, not the people sitting in No. 10. If we did that, Minister, we would get better scrutiny, better laws, and would it not be a better place?

In the 30 seconds that I am going to give the Minister to respond, all she has to say is “yes”—[Laughter.] Actually, no; we need more debate, so let us hope that we hit the buffers and we can come back to this next week. As the Minister knows, many of my suggested Bills actually finish up in law, so, at this moment of crisis for Parliament and the Government, would it not be good if we passed this Bill next week? There do not seem to be any Whips on the Opposition Benches, so I think Opposition Members could actually welcome—[Interruption.] Oh dear, there is a Whip over there, but hon. Members will take my point: this mother of Parliaments should run its own affairs. It should not be dictated to by somebody sitting in No. 10.

I really just want to emphasise one more point—

Registers of Births and Deaths Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Peter Bone

2nd reading
Friday 26th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not have any evidence on that either way. The whole purpose of the 2009 regulations was that we would still have the hard-copy back-up system. Now, having put those regulations through on the basis that there would be a hard-copy back-up system, the Government say 11 or 12 years later that we do not need one, and can rely on the electronic system. That, I think, is playing fast and loose with the House. Why did the Government introduce regulations in 2009 to amend the system while still assuring the House that hard-copy records would be retained, and why, all these years later, are they seeking to abandon them? I am very concerned about that, but let me now finish the story about my constituent.

As I said earlier, I received a reply on 26 November saying that if my constituent required the return of his documents urgently he could submit a request, but I had already submitted a request for the return of his documents to the Home Office on his behalf. The letter made no reference at all to the fact that while this delay continues, and this muddle continues unresolved, he is unable to work. It is outrageous.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) said that this was just one example. I do not want to detain the House with a whole lot of other examples, but we do know that the hacking of computer records is prolific. It is widespread. It has led to large public companies, and indeed Government Departments, suffering severe fines, penalties and reprimands because of their inability to keep accurate data and protect themselves against hacking processes.

Even in the corridor just outside my office in this wonderful building, there is a great big poster—I think it is the only poster up there—about how we in this place are under continuous cyber-attack. If we are indeed under continuous cyber-attack, why are some of my colleagues so relaxed about it? I see no grounds whatever for being relaxed, and I think we should be very vigilant and protective of our paper record system.

[Mr Bone]

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is that there must be some great injustice in the current system if it needs to be changed. If the only reason for changing it is modernisation, we as Conservatives should not be supporting it—but perhaps my hon. Friend knows what the problem is with the current system.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That takes me on to the question of how we got to where we are now. For those interested in the background to this, let me explain that one of the former Members for the Christchurch constituency, George Rose, proposed a Bill to overhaul the registration system. He did that in 1812, and Hansard reported at the time:

“It must, he thought”—

this refers to my predecessor—

“be universally allowed, that parish registers were of great importance to all ranks and classes of people from the nobleman to the peasant; and it was highly desirable they should be regularly entered, and safely deposited. At present, instead of being kept in the house of the clergyman of each parish, they were kept in a very slovenly manner in the dwelling of the parish clerk, and he had found, as Treasurer of the Navy”—

in those days you could double up these jobs—

“numberless instances of the widows of seamen, who, from this culpable negligence, were not able to prove their marriages.”

The legislation was passed, and proved to be inadequate. That ultimately led to the 1875 Act, which is the core of our current system. Under our current system, almost all the people who are born have their details recorded. I think that, according to the latest information available, there are about 20 cases a year in which people are born without having their details accurately recorded.

Fundamental to the issue is that it is a basic legal requirement to have a birth registration, and birth registration—I hope the Minister agrees—is one of our most fundamental human rights. The United Nations convention on the rights of the child acknowledges that every child should be registered immediately after birth. We now say that should be six weeks, and we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and others that it can be very burdensome for someone to go off and get their child registered.

All I can say is that my daughter gave birth to a little baby girl about a fortnight ago, and she and my son-in-law are much looking forward to going to the district register office in Lymington to record the details, including the name, of their daughter. Whatever happens, that record will be on paper as well as being an electronic record. How sad that it seems to be the intent of the Government that, in the future, people who are lucky enough to have children will not be able to have the privilege of a proper written birth certificate—a hard copy holograph birth certificate. I think that that is quite an unnecessary restriction on those fundamental freedoms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

What my hon. Friend is referring to is like saying, “When I print off an email, it’s a hard copy.” It is not a hard copy; it is emailed and printed off. The Minister is talking about an electric record that can be reproduced in hard copy form. If we are talking about hard-hard copies, then, as I asked earlier, how does that fit in with the Forgery Act? Obviously, hard copies depend on having holograph signatures, and we hear that in this Bill there is the power for people to be able to register births without having to provide any signature at all unless they can send their signature by electronic means to the registration district. This is a very serious issue.

Without dwelling any more on the history of the Act, let me just say that throughout the mid-19th century, the only blip on issues relating to birth registrations, which were increasing the whole time, was the Vaccination Act 1853, which tied compulsory vaccination of all infants to their registration and gave powers for parents to be fined for non-compliance. As always happens with the law of good intentions, it ended out quite differently because as it was the local registrar who informed parents of their legal obligation to vaccinate their children, parents who feared vaccination avoided the registrar. Plus ça change, as they might say, in the context of today’s attempts to try to require compulsory vaccination for everybody in this country even if it means depriving them of their right to work in a care home or in the national health service.

The Bill itself contains a number of provisions about which I raised concerns with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield when he brought it forward originally. One of those is the fact that there are lots of regulation-making powers in the Bill. I said to him that I thought it was desirable that those regulations or orders should be available in draft at Committee stage so that they could be properly examined in Committee. He said that he thought that was a really good idea. However, when we got to Committee, no such draft regulations were available.

I presume, because the Government attach urgency to this Bill and more than a year has elapsed, that those regulations and draft orders are available. I look forward to the Minister confirming that they are, but if they are not, why not? When will they be available? Why can we not see them before the Bill goes into Committee? These draconian measures give great power to the Government to set out regulations and change the existing law. It seems bad practice that people should be expected to go through a detailed Bill such as this in Committee without having any inkling of what the Government are hiding away in the regulations that are held in the relevant Department and are not being openly disclosed. I fear that that total lack of transparency is almost endemic in so much of what the Government do.

My next concern about the Bill is that under clause 1(3), section 28 of the 1953 Act, in relation to the custody of registers, would be repealed. That would remove any requirement for registration officers to hold registers. As a consequence, the hard copies that so many people look at when they examine their family history would not be available and accessible. Clause 4 states that such a repeal of section 28 would not affect the requirement that every superintendent registrar should keep records that were already in existence, provided that that did not cover records issued between 2009 and the day when this Bill comes into effect.

I was assured by my right hon. Friend and the Minister, who responded to the debate on the previous Bill, which is on identical terms, that the requirement to keep existing—or what might be described as old—records would not be affected in any way. However, when one looks at clause 6 of this Bill, one sees that the Government are taking the power to make further consequential provisions on any provision of this Act, including clause 4, which is meant to be a safeguard. That power

“is exercisable by statutory instrument”.

It includes the powers

“to make different provision for different purposes”

and

“to make transitional, transitory or saving provision”,

and it

“may, in particular, be exercised by amending, repealing or revoking any provision made by or under primary legislation”—

in other words, this is a Henry VIII clause writ large—

“passed or made before, or in the same Session as, this Act.”

Under the powers in clause 6, all the assurances and guarantees on the operation of clause 4 and the safeguards under what is now section 28 of the 1953 Act are completely worthless. We, as a sovereign Parliament, do not have the power to bind our successors, but we do have the power, if we so choose, not to make it too easy for our successors to change the rules against the wishes of the people. That is why I think it is outrageous that the Government should be taking powers to change by regulation the guarantees that they say are in existence in clause 4 of this Bill. That is just the sort of issue I would like to address in Committee, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden will be able to give me some indication that he will accept amendments facilitating those safeguards for existing registers and records.

Another concern I have about the Bill, which my hon. Friend alluded to in introducing it, is the way regulations could be amended to change the requirement to actually sign the register. Those provisions, set out in clause 3 of the Bill, amend the 1953 Act by inserting a new section 38B after section 38A. An extraordinary lack of information is attached to what the Government intend here. It has been alluded to in the speeches of some of my hon. Friends, who seem to think it is really desirable that we should simplify what has been a solemn and historic process of registering births; I will come on later to the issue of registering deaths.

The proposed new section says:

“Where any register of births or register of deaths is required to be kept…otherwise than in hard copy form, the Minister may by regulations provide that—

(a) a person’s duty…to sign the register at any time is to have effect as a duty to comply with specified requirements at that time, and

(b) a person who complies with those requirements is to be treated…as having signed the register”.

In other words, somebody who has not actually signed the register will be treated as having signed it. Are we seriously going to legislate to create the pretence that somebody who has not signed the register has signed it and is deemed to have signed it, that, in the case of a duty to sign the register in the presence of the registrar, they are deemed to have done so in the presence of the registrar, and that accordingly in such a case the entry in the register is to be taken for the purposes of the Act as having been signed by the person when it has not been? Why are we allowing that?

What is one of the biggest safeguards of the integrity of our births register and our deaths register? It is the sanction against forgery. A sanction against forgery is nugatory if we do not require holograph signatures. My hon. Friend who so ably introduced the discussion on the Bill seems to be slightly poleaxed—I think that might be the expression—by the references to that. We have not yet had any help from the Minister on how the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act fits into this, but maybe the regulation-making powers under clause 6 of this Bill will be able to change the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act so that it applies not to actual forgery as we would know it, with people using pen and ink to change something, but to something that is deemed to be pen and ink.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Will he tell me what happened during covid? Unfortunately, I was involved in registering a death during the covid period and it seemed to me that this was all done electronically, with no signatures required. In the case I was involved in, that did not work particularly well. Does he have any views on that?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

When we were discussing earlier the issue of registration of deaths, I drew my hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that I have had lots of constituents—he probably has the same situation—raise with me the fact that their loved ones were given death certificates that inaccurately reflected their covid status. In a sense, the Government are hoist with their own petard on that, because it was all part of what has been described as a “scaremongering propaganda campaign” to make it seem as though more people were dying from covid than were actually doing so by saying that they may have had covid within the 28 days before their death. Extraordinarily, if one asks questions about whether people have died within 21 days or 28 days of having received a vaccine against covid, the Government get very coy about that. I do not know why that might be, because I think that the more transparent the Government are, the more they will be able to counter the vaccine hesitancy that is an increasing problem in this country as people find out that some things relating to the vaccines are being suppressed if not fully exposed to public view. I will not go on about that, but I referred in this House a few weeks ago to my Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill and I do so once again, without going into any more detail about it.

There is a real problem if the Government put provisions in a Bill and then are not willing to spell out all the implications. What do the explanatory notes say about clause 3? Obviously, in the absence of anything else, one looks at the explanatory notes, but they do not help, because the notes on clause 3 just repeat the content of clause 3 without explaining what the Government have in mind. Why are we in that situation? Why has no cost-benefit analysis or regulatory impact assessment been published in respect of this Bill? We know that the requirement to do this does not apply to private Members’ Bills, but if such a Bill is, in essence, a proxy for a Government Bill, is there any reason at all why those things should not be published? Again, the Government are intent on bringing this measure forward, but wish to do so without sharing with the House and the public all the implications that flow from it and the Government’s thinking about what might happen.

[Mr Bone]

I have been thinking long and hard as the debate goes on. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill does appear to be a Government Bill but not in Government time, so it does not have an impact assessment? For that reason alone, when we vote later, I urge hon. Members to reject it to make sure that the Government bring it forward properly for proper scrutiny in Government time.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s suggestion and it would be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say in response. [Hon. Members: “Hurry up, then!”] If the Minister wishes to intervene, I shall happily give way.

It is the Government’s prerogative to bring forward their legislation to the House. When they do so in the normal way, a Bill has a regulatory impact assessment, a cost-benefit analysis and so on. The Government should not avoid that system, and avoid the need to be transparent, by using the proxy system whereby a loyal Back Bencher takes on a Bill as a handout Bill.

My hon. Friend the Minister is a man of absolute integrity who has participated in almost as many Friday debates as I have over the years. In all those debates, I have not once found him wanting in terms of dealing straightforwardly with the subject matter under discussion. It is open to him to say that he will bring forward a regulatory impact assessment before we get to Committee so that we can examine it and we know the Bill’s full implications.

There is obviously no discipline or requirement on the Government to publish the impact assessment if they think that they have a majority of 80. I imagine that the Government will now bring forward the Bill as a Government Bill because my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and I are expressing concerns about it and it is not making progress in the House as quickly as they might wish. If they do that, there will be a proper Second Reading, Committee and Report, which is fine.

I hope that we will then have the regulatory impact assessment in front of us and we will be able to assess what the Government have in mind and what they are hiding from us. Having had the experience in the previous Session of being told one thing in the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) about what would happen when we got to Committee, and those promises, or certainly expressions of intent, not materialising, I am very suspicious about the Bill.

People up and down the country will wonder why we are spending so much time discussing the issue of removing proper paper records of births. What will we do about all the people who will be adversely affected by that? I have another example of a constituent who is a South African citizen whose child was born in the United Kingdom and is therefore entitled to United Kingdom citizenship. To take his child to South Africa, he has to provide a hard-copy, holographed birth certificate. How will he do that in future if those hard copies do not exist?

That is another practical example of how the Bill’s provisions will adversely affect people of foreign citizenship who have children born in this country for whom they wish to have an old-fashioned birth certificate rather than one that has been put on a—

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Peter Bone

Friday 10th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Yes, but perhaps it would be more convenient if I actually read out the answer that we received from the Minister. He said:

“Data on the number of deaths reported of people who have died within one, two and three months of having received a COVID-19 vaccination since 1 January 2021 is not available in the format requested.

Public Health England (PHE) monitors the number of people who have been admitted to hospital and died from COVID-19 who have received one or two doses of the vaccine and will publish this data in due course.”

That data has not yet been published. It is very important that we are able to put this issue into context. There is a lot more damage being done to our citizens as a result of covid-19 vaccinations than in any other vaccination programme in history. That does not mean to say that it is not worth while, and I am certainly not an anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but what is important is that, if people do the right thing, they should not be denied access to compensation.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very strong case. Does he agree that we do not want to send a message from this House that vaccines are a bad thing? Vaccines are right and we should be vaccinated. Equally, on the rare occasion when it goes wrong, is it not right that compensation is made available—on those very rare occasions?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That is exactly my point and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for summarising it so succinctly and accurately. That is where the Government come into this. Unfortunately, I know that the Minister will not have much time, if any, in which to expand on this issue today. I hope that he will be willing to arrange for me to be able to come along with one or two colleagues to talk to Ministers about this very important issues.