Council Tax and Stamp Duty Alternatives

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) on securing this debate and putting forward the case so adeptly in his opening remarks. I do not intend to repeat them. I have spoken in favour of Fairer Share’s proposals in the past, and I think there are more things that we can do besides. I also note that the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee report from July 2021—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) was on the Committee at the time—suggested that the Government look at this area.

I welcome all the refugees from the Finance (No. 2) Bill Committee who are in the Chamber. It is a pleasure to support the Government on that, but what we are trying to do today is steer them towards ways in which they can improve our tax system in the future. I am sure the Minister will be taking notes.

I pay tribute to Fairer Share, Andrew Dixon and the people behind that campaign, for the work they have done devising the policy and producing the straight-forward numbers at the top of it, as well as for thinking incredibly hard about its implementation challenges. They have addressed the issue of valuation, which my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness referred to, and thought about how to phase it in, how to manage the revenue flows and how to manage the impact on councils. That work has been done in advance of the Treasury considering the policy. I am sure that the Treasury would look favourably at the various reports commissioned by Fairer Share, as ways in which the policy could not only be brought in but implemented in a practical way.

I will quote a few figures that reference my constituency of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Under the proposals, the average household in Newcastle-under-Lyme would gain about £600 per year, and 97% of my constituents would be better off under this regime. We know that council tax hits constituencies such as mine and those of many hon. Members here today harder, partly because it relies on that 1991 valuation. There has been a disproportionate property boom. Prices have risen everywhere, but disproportionately in the south of the country. Therefore, people in constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness are paying a far greater proportion of their property’s value in their annual council tax.

I do not want to go through all the details, because I am mindful of your strictures on brevity, Mrs Harris, but I think that moving the burden of council tax to the owner of the property rather than renters is a sensible step, not only to take a little bit off the renters’ plate, but to make life easier for councils’ collection departments, because the house is sold far less frequently than the lease changes. It is a difficult job for council collection units to keep up with those changes and ensure that people do not fall behind with their council tax when they move into a property. We all have constituents who have fallen behind with their council tax, and it can be very difficult for them to recover.

This policy would complement the Government’s levelling-up agenda. Newcastle-under-Lyme has been very fortunate, receiving more than £35 million through the towns fund and the future high streets fund to level up. I always say that levelling up is not just about nice new buildings and transport links; it is also about jobs and skills. We have to get the tax part right for levelling up, too. A policy like this would mean levelling up across the country for anyone in those poorer, lower-middle-income households. It would mean a £556 annual tax cut for 19 million people in those households. It would mean the Treasury’s approach dovetailing with that of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, in terms of the direct support given to communities such as mine. This would give direct support to families living in those communities, and families living in lower-priced houses throughout the country. It would be genuinely levelling up across the country.

Finally, I will say a quick word on stamp duty, which my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness did not cover quite so much in his speech. We hear a lot about the housing crisis and the need to build more houses to address that. In my view, downsizing is key to solving our housing crisis in this country. Obviously, people live in houses, but, in a real sense, people live in bedrooms, because someone needs a bedroom to sleep in. We have an appalling allocation of bedrooms in this country. Understandably, many people, including retired couples, still live in the house where they brought up their children. That might be a four-bedroom house in they are using only one bedroom. There are so many unoccupied bedrooms in the private sector.

This reform to stamp duty would address the impediment of stamp duty itself being a reason that people do not want to move home—it is expensive to move, even if downsizing, particularly in the south-east. The reform would also provide a strong incentive for people to downsize to a lower-value home. For all those reasons, I hope that the Treasury is listening to my hon. Friend’s proposals. I am fully in support of the motion.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate with you as Chair, Mrs Harris. I thank the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) for securing it, and I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) for their contributions.

I am sure we will shortly hear from the Minister about whether the Government have any plans to introduce a new system of property taxation. However, if they were to agree to develop and implement a new system, it would clearly take some time. They could already be helping working families by freezing council tax this year, which could be funded by strengthening the windfall tax on oil and gas producers. As the Minister will know, I and my colleagues have been deeply concerned about the increase in council tax that the Government have forced on local authorities and households this year. That tax rise has taken the bill for a typical band D property above £2,000 for the first time. It comes in the middle of a cost of living crisis and from a Government who have been responsible for 24 tax rises and for making the tax burden the highest in 70 years. At the same time, they have refused time and again to close gaps in the windfall tax on oil and gas producers’ unexpected and excessive profits. We have long said that it cannot be right for the Government to leave money on the table like that while pushing up taxes yet again for working people across the country.

The debate is focused on stamp duty as well as council tax. The last time the Government made significant changes to stamp duty was in autumn last year. The main change was to increase the nil rate threshold for stamp duty payments on residential properties, effectively by removing the lowest band. The changes were introduced by the previous Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), under the brief premiership of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). They were continued by the current Chancellor and Prime Minister—albeit on a time-limited basis—at a cost to the public finances of £1.7 billion a year. We opposed those plans and made it clear at the time that it would not have been right or responsible to support them. Given that our economy was reeling from the long-term damage the Government had done, with current and future homebuyers facing a Tory mortgage penalty, this was not the time to spend £1.7 billion a year on that tax cut. Despite that, the Government pushed ahead. So when it comes to stamp duty, it is clear that they do not have a record of spending public money wisely.

[Aaron Bell]

I am interested in what the hon. Member just said. Would a Labour Government put the stamp duty limit back to where it was—a tax penalty for millions of Britons?

[James Murray]

As I said, we opposed the stamp duty cut because it is not a way to spend public money wisely. We are clear that a Labour Government would spend public money wisely, making sure that we eased the burden on working people, who are suffering the highest tax burden in 70 years. I will be interested to see whether the Minister attempts to defend the mini-Budget stamp duty changes. Will he also defend the Government’s council tax rise and their failure to strengthen the windfall tax?

I will conclude, because I am conscious of the time. The Opposition believe that our country needs a tax system that is fairer, not one in which an ever greater burden falls on working people, and that is what we will continue to fight for.