Lord Eatwell
Main Page: Lord Eatwell (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Eatwell's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Newby
My Lords, I am sure that many noble Lords share that aim. The question is whether such a tax would have that impact, and the academic work on it is ambiguous at best.
Lord Eatwell
Will the noble Lord explain why the Government are so allergic to the financial transaction tax, which is to be levied at less than 1% of the value of transactions and by many countries, whereas we are quite happy to have stamp duty levied on transactions at 5%, which is effective only here in the UK?
Lord Newby
My Lords, we have some examples of where this kind of thing has been done in the past. In 1989, Sweden introduced its version of an FTT and in the first week the volume of bond trading fell by 85%, even though the tax rate was only 0.003%. The volume of futures trading fell by 98% and the options trading market disappeared. Not surprisingly, Sweden is not now supporting the idea of a Europe-wide FTT.