Stamp Duty Land Tax

Debate between Gideon Amos and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms

Debate between Gideon Amos and Graham Stuart

Monday 10th February 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison.

I rise to speak up for the 337 signatories to this petition from my Taunton and Wellington constituency. One thing that we should have learned—surely, I hope, the Treasury must have done—is that farms are asset-rich but cash-poor, and that especially applies to smaller family farms. The Treasury’s figure that only 27% of farms will be affected is therefore an underestimate. As the NFU has pointed out, it is more like 75%, because Government figures often leave out the fact that changes are being made to both business property relief and agricultural property relief. That means that more farms will experience an impact, since the maximum allowance applies to both combined.

More importantly, this measure fundamentally misunderstands that the value of a farm is wrapped up in the land and is about not just pounds and pence, but the integrity of that farm. If one starts selling off chunks of that farm piecemeal, time after time, one eliminates the value of that farm as a whole. The Government need to accept the damage that this family farm tax could do.

The Minister might say, “The money can be borrowed—why do they not just borrow the money and pay it off over time?” Ed Hawkins from Cutsey farm in Trull came to see me and explained that if he annualised that payment over a number of years, it would wipe out the very small margin that he depends on to live. We have heard the same thing from other Members. It is not realistic. Robbie Vile from Higher Lillesdon farm in North Curry came to see me with his son, Charlie, who is hoping to go into farming. However, looking at how farming has been treated recently—the delays in the SFI payments, the underspend of a full £358 million of the agricultural budget over the last three years, massive advantage given to Australia and New Zealand, cheap imports after Brexit and now inheritance tax—they ask: why would any young person be encouraged to go into farming in those circumstances?

[Graham Stuart]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be useful for the Minister to say from the Treasury Front Bench what the average profitability is in British farming? It would be useful to have that on the record, because it is in that context that we have to look at this. If we do not see it in context, we just compare farming with other businesses and can easily mislead ourselves as to the reality for farmers across the country.

[Gideon Amos]

I agree; that would be a very useful statistic. If the Minister is not willing to look it up, I hope he might ask the House of Commons Library to do so, because it would certainly reveal the vast number of farms that would be affected by the scale of the tax that is proposed for them.

In short, I have no objection to the taxing of super-large landowners who use farms as a loophole to avoid inheritance tax—in fact, I would support it. But the irony of this policy is that it will drive more land into the hands of those super-large landowners, because every time farmers have to sell off some of their land, it will go to one of those bigger companies. Seeing that land being sold piecemeal time after time will only damage British farming as a whole. Drawing this tax down to some of the smallest family farms in Taunton and Wellington, and across the country, is unjust. It will not raise the money that the Government say it will. It will mean piecemeal disposal of farms up and down the country. The Government really must raise the threshold for this policy or extend the transitional relief. If they do not do that, the policy needs to go and it needs to go now. That is what the Liberal Democrats would do.