Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Bill

Felicity Buchan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I promise I will be very brief. I warmly welcome the temporary cut to stamp duty. This will benefit approximately 90% of new homebuyers in the country. However, alongside some of my Conservative colleagues, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to be bolder and broader, and to look at a fundamental reform of stamp duty. Stamp duty, ultimately, is a tax on social mobility and aspiration. It prevents people from moving house to pursue new job opportunities, it prevents growing families from moving to more appropriate accommodation and, at the same time, it prevents those who want to downsize.

In my constituency, stamp duty has unintended consequences. People cannot afford the stamp duty to move to a bigger house, so what do they do? They start to renovate and to extend their existing house. For people who live in dense terraces in central London, that often means basement excavations, with all of the nuisance and noise that they cause to neighbours. Similarly, a lot of people who are in private rented accommodation are put off buying because they are concerned about the amount of stamp duty.

I completely accept the comments of the Minister that we cannot simply cut taxes without thinking about where revenue will come from, but I argue that the current levels of stamp duty at 5%, 10% and 12% are punitive levels of taxation. Certainly in my constituency, we have simply seen the number of transactions fall. I had a look at the numbers in Kensington: from 2015-16 to 2018-19, the fall in the total number of transactions was 38%, and the fall in the value of those transactions to the Exchequer was 26%. My hon. Friend for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) made the point about what we lose not only in stamp duty, but in building and renovations and in lawyers’ fees.

I welcome this measure. I am not naive—we need tax revenue in future—but I feel that this tax needs to be looked at in detail and can be finessed.