Stamp Duty Land Tax

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Access to home ownership has never been harder. Fewer and fewer people can afford to buy a home of their own, and 12,000 households in my county of Somerset are languishing on the waiting list unable to get a home at a decent rent. We have heard a lot about Mrs Thatcher, but since the sell-off of council houses began, 2.3 million were never replaced. The Conservatives broke that promise over and over again, so although our population has increased by five times that amount, we have had a massive loss of homes for social and council rent; several Conservative Governments never replaced them.

By taxing transactions, stamp duty land tax is unfair on buyers. It needs to be reformed, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) has said, as part of a full review of property taxes. The vast majority of first-time buyers would be completely unaffected by the Opposition’s proposals, because they already pay no stamp duty land tax. It seems clear that, by triggering a big increase in house prices, the policy would mostly benefit those who are selling homes at high prices, and probably only those right at the beginning of the chain.

More importantly, wiping out tax revenue without wider tax reform or any serious proposals for the resulting massive hole in public finances would be another Liz Truss Budget in the making. Perhaps she planted the magic money tree, but this autumn we are seeing the fruits of it in more mad Conservative tax proposals. It seems clear that the Conservatives have learned nothing from the Truss Budget’s rocketing of inflation and increasing of mortgage rates, which affected everyone in my constituency.

[Mr Snowden]

The interest rates on the bond market are now higher than they were after that mini-Budget. Constantly harking back to that, when we are in a worse position now than we were then, makes the point that the Lib Dems are on everybody’s and nobody’s side.

[Gideon Amos]

I understand why Conservative Members keep asking us to look forward not backwards: their own Government’s experience with the Truss Budget is one that they do not want to remember and would like to forget, but unfortunately its effects were long, far-reaching and serious for all of our constituents.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I followed him when I gave my maiden speech and it is good to see him in his place. Does it not say everything that Conservative Members are now defending the Truss Budget and all the damage that it did to communities like mine and his?

[Gideon Amos]

Absolutely. They have no recollection of the past, they are blind to the experience of their own Government, and they are only asking, urging and pleading us to look forward, not back at their own record.

In Taunton and Wellington, there are countless examples of folk who are unable to afford a home of their own. Rosanna, a qualified solicitor, has been living with her parents for over six years because she is unable to afford a new home. What is needed is a far bigger focus on building the council and social rent homes that are needed by our country. The Liberal Democrats propose to raise the number from the Government’s target of 20,000 per year to 150,000 per year. There should be less reliance on a few big house builder developers, whose interest, perfectly reasonably, is in increasing profits and the value of their land, rather than in making their products cheaper—why would they?—or in necessarily increasing the amount of housing supply.

Less reliance on the big developers and more council and social rent homes delivered by public funding would mean that there would be no need for the Government to cut the affordable housing requirements in London, as they did last week. Our manifesto provided £6 billion a year over five years to begin to achieve not just the 90,000 social rent homes that Shelter and the National Housing Federation say that we need, but our manifesto target of 150,000 homes. A decent home should not be for just the most vulnerable and excluded; all working people should be able to have a home with a decent rent. Coupled with that, we need new routes to be available for people to get on to the home ownership ladder and a new generation of rent-to-own homes, where renters can gain ownership over 30 years.

[Rebecca Smith]

The hon. Member is making a powerful speech, as he always does. However, there is a gaping hole in his argument when it comes to people who are looking not for their first home, but for a bigger home, which may be a new property or a property that already exists. What would he say to his Taunton constituents who are in that middle bracket, given that he will be voting not to scrap stamp duty? That land tax will hinder them from taking a step up the ladder, whether by buying one of the many new homes that he admirably wants delivered in his constituency or by buying a home that already exists.

[Gideon Amos]

I would point my constituents to the comments made by Lucian Cook, the head of research at Savills, who has said that the proposed SDLT giveaway would simply pass straight into house prices. It would have very little, if any, effect on people’s ability to buy homes, whether they are downsizing or not.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. I may have misheard, so will he clarify for the benefit of the House? At the beginning of his remarks, I thought that he said that this was a very bad tax and that it was harmful, but then, as only a Lib Dem could, he proceeded to argue strongly in its favour. Will he help me out, because I am not following the line of his argument?

[Gideon Amos]

The right hon. Member, for whom I usually have respect, was clearly not listening to what I said. It is possible for there to be several features to a change in tax policy. Our argument, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans pointed out, is that we need a comprehensive review of property taxes. The effect of the stamp duty holiday was to increase house prices. It may, none the less, be a valuable policy, because it may free up transactions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) argued. My observation is that these are not the policies that will help people who are struggling to afford a home to rent and to get on the housing ladder in the first place. They may be valuable for other reasons, but they will not address that problem. As I say, coupled with that we need a big investment in rent-to-own housing. Since 2015—this is the big point, which would be unaffected by the Conservative proposal— the multiple of income needed to get a mortgage, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, has risen from four-and-a-half to six-and-a-half times their income.

Without more genuinely affordable homes in significant numbers and wider tax reform, this cut is unfunded. It will leave first-time buyers with nothing new and transfer funds to the wealthiest. That is simply not enough to help my constituents. We need a much more ambitious renaissance in the building of council and social rent homes, and we need new measures to help people to get on to the housing ladder.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

I am glad that my hon. Friend is calling out the consequence of Thatcherite policies. Does he agree that no country has suffered more from Thatcherite policies than Wales?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion of his constituency in Wales and has experienced the effects of the reduction in and dwindling of council and social rent homes around the country in Wales, as in other parts of the country, including in my own constituency. We used to have 30,000 council homes available, but we now have only 6,000, and that number is going down every year.

This is not about the broken promise not to allow people to buy their homes; it is about the broken promise of not replacing those council and social rent homes. That has to be addressed, and it was never addressed by multiple Conservative Governments. Without those changes and wider tax reform and investment in social and council rent homes, this policy on its own would do nothing to help my constituents, and I am unable to support it.