Budget Resolutions

Jonathan Brash Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I welcome so much that is in the Budget: the measures to reduce the cost of living, most notably the £150 off energy bills; the lifting of half a million children out of poverty, including 3,210 in my constituency of Hartlepool, paid for by taxes on online gambling; and the decision to introduce a mansion tax for properties valued over £2 million, in a nod to our broken council tax system. Sadly, however, a nod is all it was and it does nothing to fix the underlying problem.

Council tax is the most unfair, most outdated and most indefensible tax in Britain today. The longer the Government refuse to reform it, the clearer it becomes that working-class towns like mine are expected to carry on paying the price for a lack of political courage. Let us be honest about what council tax really is: it is a relic of the 1990s, frozen in time, frozen in injustice and weaponised against the poorest communities in this country. Nowhere is that clearer than in Hartlepool, where a band D property costs £2,500 a year for its occupants and here in Westminster it is just £1,000. That is not just unfair; it is a scandal hiding in plain sight.

For many households in Hartlepool, council tax is not just another bill. It is the bill that breaks the family budget, it is the bill that pushes families into arrears and it is the bill that tips people from coping into crisis. What is the answer from successive Governments? We are told that it is too complicated, we are told that it is too politically difficult and we are told that now is not the right time. For the people of Hartlepool and constituencies like it, it has been the right time for decades.

The worst accusation is that if we introduce a new system, there will be winners and losers. The current system has winners and losers. The losers live in terraced houses and the winners live in mansions.

There is nothing Labour about defending a system that punishes working-class communities and protects high-value wealth. There is nothing Labour about a tax that hits hardest those with the least. There is nothing Labour about lacking the political courage to sweep the system away once and for all. Council tax does not merely fail working-class towns; it targets them. There is a solution: a proportional property tax, as backed by Fairer Share. That is what we have to introduce. I urge Ministers to summon the courage to get rid of this regressive tax that harms the people I represent.