Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the HM Treasury
(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right, as always, about the importance of private enterprise in driving our growth forward. He is right to highlight a freeport. I know what a difference it would make to his community; I remember that when I met his local businesses they were hungry to take up that opportunity to attract investment, to create new jobs, and to drive up productivity, and I look forward to working with him in the coming months on trying to make that a reality.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
A nine-month cut to stamp duty is welcome, but without an injection of new houses it risks forcing up prices, making it harder, not easier, for first-time buyers to buy homes. This statement should have been taken as an opportunity to inject capital into the housing market, and also into social housing, building houses that people can afford to live in, and creating opportunities for new jobs, new apprenticeships and new skills that people can use in the future, so will the Chancellor go away and have a look at putting some money particularly into building social housing?
Rishi Sunak
The good news is that we already have. The Prime Minister announced it, and I talked about it at the Budget: the affordable homes programme will increase from £9 billion to £12 billion over the next few years, a significant uplift in the amount of new housing delivery—180,000 new homes, from memory. With regard to the benefits of stamp duty, the evidence we have both from economists and HMRC is that the majority of the benefit of a stamp duty cut last time around, in ’08-’09, accrued to the buyers.