Stamp Duty Land Tax

Lucy Rigby Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Rigby)]

I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. I especially thank the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) for his speech at the start, and the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Sir Mel Stride) for bringing forward this debate. I also thank the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly) for concluding on behalf of the Opposition.

With those niceties over, I turn to the substance of the motion we are debating, which, as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said, is fundamentally flawed. Despite the Leader of the Opposition’s seemingly steadfast commitment to having no policy at all, which has now been very much abandoned, Conservative Members have looked back at their shockingly bad economic record and taken the rather extraordinary view that they are well placed to offer input and advice on the upcoming Budget, which is entirely a matter for the Chancellor to decide once she has seen the OBR’s forecast and which she will share with the House at the end of next month.

The Conservatives have looked at all of this, thought for seemingly quite a long time about it, and decided that now is the right moment to offer some policy. The solution to all the hardship they inflicted on the country during their time in power is more of the same: more unfunded tax cuts, more instability, more austerity, more harm to our public services and, dare I say it, more of the approach that meant that their penultimate Prime Minister was outlasted by a lettuce.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the Economic Secretary give way?

[Lucy Rigby]

I will make some progress.

That is the Conservatives’ pitch to the British public—reckless with our public finances, reckless with our public services and reckless with the future of this country. Conservative Members are competing to say how sad and angry they are about this tax. They will be furious when they find out which party gave us the highest tax burden since the second world war! [Interruption.] The motion is a seemingly straight-faced argument from Conservative Members that we should do the exact thing that brought their 14 years of government to an end. It is proof that they have learned—

[Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. It is not my job to write yours or the Minister’s speech—if only. That was not a point of order.

[Lucy Rigby]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The motion is proof that the Conservatives have learned none of the lessons of their catastrophic mini-Budget or of the years of the punishing austerity that was inflicted on the people and institutions of this country, with nothing whatsoever to show for it but soaring debt, low productivity and devastated household finances.

Let me be clear that stamp duty is not a beloved tax—far from it; it is no more beloved than any other taxes—but it is an effective tax that raises billions of pounds annually, with those buying the most expensive properties contributing the most. That contribution is vital to the upkeep of our public services, our NHS, our schools and our armed forces. Abolishing it would take billions out of the public purse—£13.9 billion alone. It would be a multibillion-pound tax cut affecting the budgets of our most essential services.

It is the same horror show from the same old Conservatives, wildly swinging their scythe at public services without a care in the world for the consequences for our NHS, our schools and our armed forces. Which services would Conservative Members want to cut down this time? Would it be fewer nurses, fewer soldiers or fewer police officers? [Interruption.] Conservative Members are asking me whether I am asking them. I am more than aware that in the debate they referenced their fantasy economics based on welfare cuts. The shadow Chancellor oversaw the biggest increase in benefit spending in decades when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. If he truly believes that welfare spending needs cutting, why did he let it balloon? We have heard from various hon. Members about their objections to this tax and about all sorts of things they imagine might be in the Budget.

[Graham Stuart]

Just to be clear, does the Minister agree that this is a bad tax? Would she, in a perfect world, seek to find ways of controlling public expenditure so that the tax could be removed and people across the country—first-time buyers and the elderly in particular—could benefit from that?

[Lucy Rigby]

It is a tax, so obviously I do not love it, but what I find extraordinary is the Conservative party’s new-found hatred of taxation when they increased taxes 25 times in the last Parliament.

As I said, we heard from various hon. Members about their objections to this tax. I will not engage on the points made about the Budget, for obvious reasons, except to repeat that we are committed to a single major fiscal event per year where the Chancellor will set out any tax decisions in the usual way alongside the OBR’s forecast. That fiscal event will take place, as everyone knows, on 26 November, at which point there will be plenty of time to discuss and debate the decisions that the Chancellor takes in the Budget.

I want to speak to some of the points raised during the debate. We heard plenty from Conservative Members about why they want to abolish stamp duty. I think some points were made thoughtfully; I say that in a well-meant way. I am sorry to say, however, that we heard absolutely nothing from Conservative Members on their appalling economic record. We heard nothing from them on their appalling record on house building—save for the acknowledgment of the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse)—nothing on the waste of public money from the fraud on their watch, and nothing whatsoever that could be described as fiscal responsibility.

We heard from some of my hon. Friends on the Labour Benches about the urgent need to build more houses in this country, given our appalling inheritance. That is the key way that we solve the housing crisis. I pay tribute to the thoughtful speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis), for Crewe and Nantwich (Connor Naismith) and for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), and to my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) and for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance), who spoke powerfully of the consequences of the Conservative party’s mismanagement of the economy, which include food banks, poverty and, of course, the housing crisis.

I welcome the commitment of the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire. He talked about the need to build more housing and, indeed, about beautiful housing. I assure him that that is exactly the type of housing that this Government will facilitate being built—although I note that his colleagues took him straight back to opposing development no sooner had he made that point. I also welcome his mini-insight into the infighting of the last Government.

[Dr Luke Evans]

The hon. Lady may recall that it was a Labour Secretary of State who removed the word “beautiful” from the national planning policy framework. How does she expect to have those beautiful designs if that has been taken away as a standard within the guidance that her Government provided?

[Lucy Rigby]

I assure him that the houses will be beautiful and that we will build 1.5 million of them over the course of this Parliament. There was a brief reference to Nirvana from the Conservative Benches before a descent back into half-baked and unfunded plans, to which we on the Government Benches thought, “Well, Nevermind.”

[Sir James Cleverly]

Have a word with your officials; that was very bad.

[Sir Mel Stride]

Stick to the day job.

[Lucy Rigby]

Thank you. I was pleased to hear the Liberal Democrats spokesman, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), and others in the party say that they will oppose the motion. I wholeheartedly agree with her that it is fundamentally flawed.

To be clear, we are a Government of fiscal responsibility. Our steadfast commitment to the fiscal rules has brought stability to our economy and allowed us to boost investment by £120 billion over the course of this Parliament. The dividends of that approach, even after just a year, are already clear: the highest growth in the G7 in the first half of this year, cuts to interest rates, real wages rising more in the time since the last election than they did in 10 years of Conservative Government, record investments from overseas, and new homes and infrastructure progressing all over the country. That is a strong foundation to build on in the years ahead.

Today, we have debated a simple question of two visions for the country. Put another way, does this country go forwards or backwards? The Conservative party wants us to go back—back to its time in office, when Britain had a Government that pursued unfunded tax cuts and austerity, leading to soaring debt, low productivity, under-investment and anaemic growth. It was a Britain where we did not build infrastructure, including houses, and where far too many people were unable to get on the housing ladder.

This Government want the country to move forward. We are managing the public finances with stability and certainty in an uncertain world. We are a Government who invest in public services, our infrastructure and our communities, and work with businesses and local leaders to bring growth and opportunity to every part of the country. We are a Government who are building houses, including in areas of the country that the shadow Secretary of State—

[Sir James Cleverly]

She missed out the word “fewer”. It is “fewer houses”.

[Lucy Rigby]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am afraid that I am being interrupted. We are a Government who are building houses, including in areas of the country that the shadow Secretary of State has previously described in rather unparliamentary language. We are a Government who support working people with new jobs, higher wages and new homes. We are a Government who are committed to building 1.5 million new homes this Parliament and to restoring the dream of home ownership.

We are a Government who will not duck the difficult decisions but face into them, because that is the only way that we will deliver a decade of national renewal and a thriving economy for the people of this country. That is what today’s debate is about: backwards with fiscal irresponsibility from the Conservatives or forwards with economic stability, investment and reform under this Prime Minister and this Chancellor.

Question put.