Stamp Duty Land Tax (Reduction) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Selaine Saxby]

Nothing would give me more pleasure than to go back and speak with the Minister about these matters. We all worry about why the NHS is struggling to recruit. I can quite definitively tell people here today that the public sector struggles to recruit in North Devon because of the housing crisis.

We on the Conservative Benches are keen to tackle this issue. Yesterday’s cross-party drop-in session was hugely helpful. We heard from the officials behind the legislation, as well as from the Minister. It is just a shame that Opposition Members did not turn up—not one of them. They have tabled a number of amendments to the Bill, but do we really need to put reviews into legislation? One cannot help but wonder whether such amendments are politically motivated rather than aimed at delivering real change to constituencies that urgently need their housing markets to be rebalanced.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is an honour and a delight to follow my hon. Friends the Members for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) and for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). May I say at the outset that I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that you should be Sir Nigel, Mr Evans? If I call you Sir Nigel, will I have as much time to speak as my hon. Friend?

It is a pleasure to speak because, as the chair of the Back-Bench Treasury committee, I have done a lot of work on stamp duty policy, and I have had a slightly perverse interest in stamp duty for the last decade or so and written various policy papers and research reports on it. We all support raising the level of home ownership. In fact, rates of home ownership started to decline under the previous Labour Government. There is a home ownership gap of about 5 million people who want to own their own home but cannot. I will support all measures—well, pretty much all measures—to increase home ownership. Clearly, we are teetering on the brink of recession and need to promote economic growth, so I very strongly support the broad thrust of the Bill in cutting stamp duty to help people get on to and up the property ladder and to stimulate economic growth. I have some reservations about the proposal being temporary and about it applying to second properties.

I will address some of the key themes of stamp duty policy. We have heard various calls today—not least from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—to abolish stamp duty outright, and in fact, I have called for that before. But it is not just Conservative MPs who think that stamp duty should be abolished outright; the Institute for Fiscal Studies, on whose advisory council I sit, talked in its magisterial work on taxation policy—the Mirrlees review—about all the damage of stamp duty and called for it to be abolished.

Lord Macpherson, a former permanent secretary at the Treasury, gave evidence fairly recently to the Treasury Committee, on which I sit, about tax policy. He highlighted all the damage that stamp duty did to the economy, for many of the reasons that my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) set out earlier. Lord Macpherson certainly would not be sad to see its demise.

I want to raise a slightly more nuanced point than the outright abolition of stamp duty, which would lead to a big problem with revenue, as it raised £14 billion last year in total—about £4 billion for commercial property and £10 billion for residential. That would be a hole. My more nuanced argument is that people buying houses to live in are overtaxed, but people buying properties either as second homes or for investment are undertaxed. Exactly 10 years ago, in 2013, I wrote a paper arguing for a higher rate of stamp duty for people who are buying homes not to live in. Fundamentally, homes are for living in. Two years later, the Government introduced that policy. It is now the additional premium. I do not think the Government introduced it in the right way and there are all sorts of problems with it, but I will not go into detail on that now. The stamp duty regime at least recognises the difference between people buying properties for investment or as second homes as opposed to people buying properties to live in as their homes. That tilts the property market in favour of those buying homes to live in, which is welcome.

[Tim Farron]

I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman in his good, interesting speech. He said that it is possible for stamp duty purposes to distinguish between a second home and a first home. That means it would clearly be possible to distinguish between second homes and first homes for planning purposes, which would give local authorities the power to ensure that they protect a minimum number of homes for local families. I gave the Government the opportunity just before Christmas to vote for an amendment to do that—why does he think they did not do so?

[Anthony Browne]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I must admit I do not know the reasons behind that, but it clearly is possible, at least from a taxation point of view, to distinguish between homes for investment and homes for living in. From a planning point of view, there are probably other considerations.

[Tim Farron]

It is political will, I would say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

There may be many reasons.

The capital gains tax regime already distinguishes between homes for investment purposes and homes for living in. People do not pay capital gains tax on the home they live in, but if they do not live in it, they do pay. The reason that people buying homes are overtaxed has been laid out by many colleagues, so I will not overlay that, but clearly we need labour mobility and for people to be able to live in appropriate housing. If we overtax housing, we end up with lots of people living in inappropriate houses, not least the home hoarders at the end of their working lives and the empty nesters whose kids have gone and who live in too big a house and do not want to move. That has a damaging impact on labour mobility, as people want to move around the country. It is the most economically damaging tax.

The reason I say that people buying second homes for whatever purpose or homes for investment are undertaxed is that stamp duty is a transaction tax. All other transaction taxes—we can argue about whether VAT or excise duty on petrol are transaction taxes—are flat-rated. People pay the same rate, whatever the value. We pay 20% VAT whether we are buying something for £10, £100 or £100,000. Stamp duty, however, is a progressive transaction tax, with a lower rate at the bottom end that progressively goes up, as it is designed now. That zero rate and lower rate for lower value properties is for social reasons. It is basically to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder, which is welcome, and to help people get up the property ladder. That is a valid social reason to have progressive stamp duty, but that reason does not apply to people buying second homes or investment properties. There is no reason to have a graduated stamp duty to help property investors get on to the property investment merry-go-round.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that somebody in Christchurch who is having to buy an average priced house at the cost of £405,000—as compared with someone in Louth and Horncastle, who can buy the same house for £200,000—should not be taxed double, in a sense, in addition to having to pay a higher mortgage?

[Anthony Browne]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He proposed earlier that stamp duty should be based on the area of the property; I have some reservations about that for economic efficiency reasons. One of the considerations of taxation should be the ability to pay. If someone is buying a house for £400,000, clearly they will be able to pay a bit more tax than if they were buying a house for £200,000. But if the Government follow my proposal to get rid of stamp duty on residential properties altogether as an objective, his constituents will not have to pay any stamp duty whatsoever. They will pay the same stamp duty as the people buying houses in Louth.