Stamp Duty Land Tax

Connor Naismith Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I would say to everyone who works in building homes that Labour is the party that is getting on with building: we are making changes to the planning system to get those homes build. Despite his attempt to make a link to my previous comment, I notice that the right hon. Gentleman did not address that fact that this motion is entirely half-baked. It is a genuine shame for British politics that we have an Opposition who think that they can put forward a motion like this for serious debate in the House of Commons. To be fair, the Conservative party is steeped in centuries of being in Opposition and in Government, but it has become deeply unserious by putting forward motions such as the one today. The motion simply says that the Conservatives’ plan to abolish stamp duty is “to reduce public expenditure”; that it is—that is the sum of their plan.

[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

The Minister is right to say that the Opposition have not been clear about how they would fund this tax cut, but there are some clues. The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), told a fringe event at the Tory party conference that we should look at the Australian system of state pensions and “essentially” a means-tested state pension. Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns that under the Tories the state pension would be under threat?

[James Murray]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the state pension would be under threat were the Conservatives to win the next general election. He is also right to draw the House’s attention to comments made by Conservative Members at their party conference. They may think that people are not listening to what they say at those conference fringe meetings, but we get the reports so we know exactly what they said.

From their recent conference, we know that they think that they can find some £47 billion through cuts to public spending, as the shadow Chancellor said, but let us look at the detail. At least half of those fantasy savings come from a welfare plan that amounts to a menu with no prices: a list of measures that the Conservatives say will raise £23 billion in total, but with no breakdown whatsoever of how. In June last year, just as they were on their way out of Downing Street, they said that they could cut £12 billion from the welfare bill. Now they have doubled that without explanation. Frankly, if the shadow Chancellor thinks that he has any credibility on this matter, he is sadly mistaken. He is far from the best person to make this argument, given that he personally oversaw the biggest increase in benefits spending in decades during his time as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

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[Connor Naismith]

The hon. Gentleman said that this tax cut would benefit everybody. Can he tell me how it would benefit people who do not currently pay it because their property is not worth enough?

[Saqib Bhatti]

First of all, it would increase mobility in the housing market. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) stated in an incredibly eloquent speech, it would also mean that the construction industry and all the peripheral jobs would start to mobilise. It would create economic growth—I suspect that the figure of £1.2 billion is probably a bit of an underestimate, and that abolishing stamp duty would actually create more growth. We are talking about creating jobs, making people wealthier and being aspirational for the aspirational, whereas Labour Members are talking down a credible policy that would put money on the table for some of our poorest people. Ultimately, abolishing stamp duty would mean that more and more people are able to get on to the housing ladder.

Let us face it: the Government are not going to meet their housing targets. It is already quite obvious that they are massively behind, and it will not be possible to meet their targets. They are killing off aspiration and confidence in the economy, and house builders will not want to meet the targets—unless, of course, they are met with huge subsidies. The question I have for those on the Government Benches is this: given the current economic situation, how much representation have they made to their Chancellor about introducing growth principles and cutting taxes so that people have more money in their pockets? The answer will be none, because that is not happening.

The hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) said that he was not making an argument for not cutting welfare, but he did not put a figure on the table. We know that the welfare bill is ballooning, and it started ballooning post covid. We intervened during the pandemic, which had to happen. We saved a £2 trillion economy, we saved businesses and we saved jobs. We did all those things—sometimes with the support of those on the Opposition Benches and sometimes without, I am sad to say—to save the economy. Of course, all of that comes with a cost. It is now right that we look forward to make sure that we are putting proposals on the table that help grow the economy and, by the way, help the Chancellor to get out of this mess. I want her to do better, because right now I have constituents who are struggling, who are anxious and who are worried. Her policies, backed by those on the Labour Back Benches, have contributed to higher inflation and a higher cost of living. These are all consequences that they backed by walking through the voting Lobbies.

There is a Budget coming. Although Labour Back Benchers may be talking in silos, the Government are already briefing the papers about all the taxes that will rise. They talk about “serious Government”, but they are not talking seriously about the cuts that they will have to put on the table, because the Chancellor knows that the moment she does that, it will be her Back Benchers who stab her in the back. That is her fundamental conundrum, because she also has to placate the bond market, where we have highest bond yields. I see Labour Members shaking their heads, but that is the reality of what Back Benchers are dealing with. We are putting good proposals on the table that would mean that young families who want to get on the housing ladder—[Interruption.] I am happy for the hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) to intervene if he wants. No? I was offering him an opportunity, because I was getting distracted by his chuntering.

The reality is that most serious economists, such as Dan Neidle and those at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, have said that stamp duty is a bad tax. In fact, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), who I hear has been instrumental in writing the Budget, has talked about stamp duty being a “bad tax”. We all agree on that, so we have put a funded policy on the table that the Chancellor is going to need. Surely this is something that we should all take seriously, because the Government will need answers. I suspect we will come back to that.

A lot has been made of the Chancellor’s fiscal rules. The Chief Secretary to Treasury said that they are “ironclad”, and I suspect they are until the next ones. We have a golden rule. In the spirit of rules, the Leader of the Opposition has created a golden rule, which is that for every £1 saved, half will go to cutting our national debt. Surely we can all get behind that. When the interest on our debt is something like £100 billion a year, surely we can get behind that. When the Chancellor is borrowing more month after month to meet everyday spending, as is obviously happening, we should get behind that rule.

The last point I want to make is about the cliff-edge argument. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire mentioned, we had the window during covid. I was one of those on the receiving end of not being able to buy a house at that time. I was looking for a house for my new family, and houses were going quickly because people were trying to beat the cliff edge at the end of the stamp duty window. This proposal is not the same, because this gets rid of such a window, and it means that more and more people will be able to buy houses.

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[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

I start by acknowledging a point that many Members across the House have made. Many of us would not defend the principle of stamp duty; indeed, if it did not already exist, it is hard to believe that we would invent it. However, that is not the question before us today. If we are to decide to abolish stamp duty, we must say how we will pay for it, and we have to justify that decision as a priority above all the other decisions that we might make on what to do with that money.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

We Liberal Democrats accept that property taxes must be reformed—arguably, radically so—but I struggle with the Conservatives, who governed for years without substantial reform, now promising to abolish stamp duty with no credible plans to pay for it. Where is the money coming from? Is the magic money tree being re-rooted?

[Connor Naismith]

The hon. Member is right to point out that the Conservatives had 14 years in government. Now they are in opposition, they want to talk about all the magical savings that they could make. Why did they not do it when they were in government? It is too little, too late. As I was saying, if you decide that you want to do this, you have to tell us how you will pay for it, and justify that priority over all the other priorities.

[Rachel Taylor]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what has locked young people out of the housing market over the last 14 years is not the existence of stamp duty, but the astronomical rise in house prices? They have gone from being around three times a first-time buyer’s income to more like 10 times in constituencies like mine and his.

[Connor Naismith]

I completely agree. The most common reason I hear from my constituents for their inability to get on the housing ladder is that astronomical rise in house prices.

[Saqib Bhatti]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Connor Naismith]

I will make some progress. The motion tells us everything we need to know about the priorities of the Conservative party today. In the context of the vast majority of options that we could choose to pursue, this is a regressive tax cut, funded once again by cuts—cuts that they will not be brave enough to specify with any credibility. Reckless with our public finances, reckless with our public services, and utterly out of touch with the realities facing working families in constituencies like mine in Crewe and Nantwich.

[Saqib Bhatti]

The hon. Member uses the word reckless. Has he heard the news that the OBR has said the Chancellor will have to find another £7 billion to £9 billion due to the fall in productivity? Therefore her black hole has just got bigger.

[Connor Naismith]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. Look, we will await the Budget to see the OBR’s forecasts, but I will take no lessons from the party opposite on economic credibility. They are the party of Liz Truss, which dragged this country into the economic abyss.

We know that Tory austerity and a lack of investment in our country’s infrastructure are part of the story of why our economic growth and productivity have never recovered since the financial crash in 2008. It seems like the Conservatives want to take us right back to the beginning of that 14 years of chaos, failure and decline. I think my constituents would say no, frankly. What is worse, the Conservatives cannot even tell us with any credibility where the cuts would fall. We have seen this playbook before. They have no credible plan to pay for their promises, just vague talk of savings from the very services that our communities rely on—our schools, NHS and local infrastructure. The Tories have some cheek to come here and talk about home ownership when they manifestly failed to build the homes that our country needs because they presided over a broken planning system that they did nothing to reform.

As I mentioned earlier, my constituents have not forgotten what Liz Truss’s mini-Budget did to their mortgage payments. During the election campaign, I spoke directly with families in Crewe and Nantwich who had seen their monthly costs soar overnight. I distinctly remember speaking to a man who told me that his mortgage payments had risen by £1,000 a month and that he had been forced to sell his home as a result. If we want to examine the reality beyond the rhetoric of the modern day Conservative party’s record on home ownership, it is that: failure to deliver, soaring prices and broken dreams.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Member talks about broken dreams, but no Government Member has spoken about the hard-working families in the middle—not the ones struggling to buy their first home and not the so-called rich people at the top who in the Government’s world this will benefit, but the hard-working families, who he has no doubt spoken to, who cannot buy a property with an additional bedroom for their growing family because of stamp duty. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) referenced, that stamp duty is the difference between the price of the home they wish to buy and the dream of actually succeeding in doing so.

[Connor Naismith]

It was those families in the middle who suffered most at the hands of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, so I would expect Conservative Members to apologise to those families in my constituency for their record on the economy over the past 14 years.

Compare all that with what Labour is delivering in government. We are getting Britain building, and not just the homes we need. In Crewe and Nantwich, we are getting a new hospital at Leighton, the new youth zone in Crewe town centre, a new history centre and many more things that our community will benefit from. The choice ahead at the Budget is clear: stick with Labour’s plan for national renewal or return to the chaos and cuts of the past, whatever shade of blue that comes in. Labour chooses a fairer economy, one that works for working people and rewards them. That is what we are building in Crewe and Nantwich and across Britain. The people of Crewe and Nantwich deserve better than unfunded tax cuts and economic instability. They deserve a Government that invest in the future, protect their services and build a Britain for all.