Stamp Duty Land Tax

Rachel Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I will in a minute. The third point I want to make, which I guess is the one that might appeal most to Government Members, is that this tax is generationally unfair. Younger people move house more often, so they are more exposed to this tax. The younger someone is, the more likely they are to be building a family, to require more space, and to be moving up the ladder. Older people tend to sit still. They sit pretty on their capital, which is often in unmortgaged houses. Because of the lack of a market, they generally under-occupy the houses they own. When looking at stamp duty, we have to look at generational fairness, too.

In my constituency, hundreds and hundreds of aspirational families need more space. They would like to move up the ladder. They have worked hard and accumulated a deposit and the money that would allow them to move, but they want to spend that money on curtains, carpets, decoration and all the rest of it. They are deterred from moving by this tax. If we are to be fair to the next generation, we have to not only build the houses that they want to buy, but make it cheap for them to buy them, and that means cancelling stamp duty.

For all those reasons—to ensure fluidity and liquidity in a market that is skewed to produce artificially high prices; to ensure a market in which developers take a risk and build more houses, and landowners put land forward; but fundamentally for a generation who are being denied access to housing—we need to take seriously the idea that stamp duty is at the heart of the problem, and we need to abolish it entirely. The Liberal Democrats say that abolishing it will raise prices. It of course raises prices if we tell people that there is a window. That would result in frantic activity from those who are desperate to buy. If the abolition becomes permanent, we get a liquid market that achieves a real price, notwithstanding the initial bump.

As for those who say that the savings cannot be found, we should be able to find this amount of money, given the size of the Government’s budget, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) said. I had a look this morning, and I could find 50% of the amount in the Department for Transport’s budget, no problem. The other half could come from the welfare reforms on which the Labour party bottled it. We could easily find the money and do the whole country and the economy an enormous favour.

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[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to speak in the debate. In a spirit of cross-party unity, I congratulate His Majesty’s Opposition on their valiant and brave attempts to dress up a political tax cut as a meaningful intervention in the housing market. I have been looking at every single Conservative Member who has spoken and thinking about whether they really believe that such a tax cut would actually make a difference.

[Bradley Thomas]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Rachel Blake]

I would like to develop my argument a little bit further, and then I look forward to hearing from the hon. Member. I read the Opposition’s proposals with interest, and have been looking to see exactly how they intend to fund their proposed tax cut. I am struck by the fact that the Conservatives want to bring forward even more unfunded proposals. They are not satisfied with their devastation of public services after their attempts at austerity; with crashing the economy, driving up mortgage costs and rents, and driving down the supply of new homes and overall rates of home ownership; or with their botched Brexit deal, which, through its impact on the economy, has wrecked many people’s chance to buy a home. No, they propose yet more ill-thought-through tax cuts.

In the likely event that the Opposition’s ill-thought-through proposals for funding this tax cut are undeliverable, I wonder whether they would cut £14 billion from Labour’s £39 billion investment in genuinely affordable homes. Would they cut £14 billion from the £23 billion that the Government invested in the National Wealth Fund to get our economy going? Would they take money out of our £3.8 billion homelessness fund? The truth is that the Conservative Government’s interventions in the housing market resulted in temporary accommodation use, rough sleeping, mortgage rates and rents going up, and home ownership going down. The Tories pretend to be the party of home ownership, but it is Labour that is absolutely determined to get homes built. It is Labour that is coming forward with proposals to get homes built, and Labour, I believe, that will deliver on that.

[Bradley Thomas]

Does the hon. Member accept that over the last 30 years, the four years with the highest levels of new housing delivery occurred since 2018, under Conservative Governments? She is trying to make the point that stamp duty abolition is a tax cut dressed up as an intervention in the housing market. What on earth is wrong with giving a tax cut to aspirational people who work hard and want to move up the housing ladder?

[Rachel Blake]

For the last two hours, the proposal has been presented by Opposition Members as a meaningful housing market intervention because of their supposed commitment to aspiration. The Labour party has always been the party of aspiration, and it has been the driving force behind social mobility throughout the last century. [Interruption.] Conservative Members know that, and that is why they are chuntering so much.

[Rachel Gilmour]

I wanted to speak earlier on social mobility, which the hon. Lady mentioned. If anybody wants to see what happens to social mobility under the Conservatives, all they need do is come to Minehead in my constituency, which is ranked 324th out of 324 for social mobility in the entire country, having had a Conservative Member of Parliament for 23 years who did nothing.

[Rachel Blake]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, which speaks for itself.

There is a stark contrast with what the Labour Government are doing, and their meaningful interventions in the housing market. The Renters Rights Act 2025, which has received Royal Assent, is stabilising life for renters, making sure that they no longer live in fear of no-fault evictions. We have also defeated a judicial review against vested interests and freeholders, so that we can move forward with our leasehold proposals. Those are both significant interventions that the Opposition failed to deliver after 14 years, five of which they spent trying to deliver reform for renters and leaseholders that would have meaningfully stabilised the housing market. We have not heard anything about all the people stuck in their homes because of the last Government’s complete failure to tackle the cladding crisis or leasehold. We have just had political dressing-up of an unfunded proposed tax cut.

The other thing that the Labour Government have done is made sure that we are stabilising the economy. As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) told us, people who want to save up to join the housing market need a stable economy. We have seen interest rates come down five times, which we think is saving mortgage payers about £100 a month. They are better off because of the stability that our Chancellor and this Labour Government are beginning to deliver.

[Gregory Stafford]

The hon. Lady is being generous with interventions; I thank her for that. To bring her back to stamp duty land tax, the average house price in her constituency is over £1 million. [Interruption.] I have not quite finished. Her constituents are the precise people who would benefit from this saving. Does she not think that they would welcome the abolition of this tax?

[Rachel Blake]

I am interested in how much the hon. Member knows about my constituency. He may know that nearly half of my constituents are private renters, and only about 15% can afford to own their own home in my constituency because of the record failures of the previous Government to do something about the cladding crisis, the supply of new genuinely affordable homes and the delivery of low-cost home ownership, which would have really made a difference. Rather than the Conservatives’ ill-thought-through proposals, Westminster city council under its Labour leadership is able to deliver more genuinely affordable homes, and this Labour Government are taking the challenge seriously.

We have seen His Majesty’s Opposition make a valiant attempt to dress up a politically motivated tax cut as a meaningful housing intervention. Serious thinking, this is not. I am pleased that the House will vote against their ill-thought-through proposal and that we will carry on with delivering meaningful intervention in the housing market and making sure that our publicly funded services are stable into the future.

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[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

I thank my colleagues for their enthusiasm. It is a great pleasure to contribute to this really important debate. So many people—particularly young people—are desperate to get their foot on the housing ladder, but they feel—

[Rachel Blake]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Rebecca Paul]

I gently say to the hon. Member that I have not really got into the flow of my speech yet, either. I will finish the first sentence before I take any interventions. People feel that that vital first rung is utterly out of their reach.

I remember when I bought my first property. It was the most amazing feeling in the world when I first walked through that door, with those keys. It was really hard to earn enough to secure the mortgage that I needed and to save up the money for the stamp duty and the deposit. I managed to do it, but I would have been able to do it sooner without that stamp duty cost. That is why I am delighted that the Conservatives have come forward with a clear, coherent and aspirational plan to abolish stamp duty land tax on the purchase of primary residences and to open up the dream of home ownership to the next generation.

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[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

This debate captures the key difference between Conservatives and the Labour party, because we on the Conservative Benches believe in people. We believe in their talent, their drive, their hopes and their aspirations. By contrast, the Labour party likes to box people in, to restrict, to regulate and to let the state determine every aspect of their lives. We on this side of the House believe in setting people free to work hard, to achieve and to build their own future. Let us unleash the power of individual freedom. Let us unleash the energy of the maker and of enterprise. Above all, let us unleash the unstoppable force of aspiration across every part of the UK. The word “aspiration” runs through the very DNA of the Conservative party. It is who we are, from delivering educational reforms and promoting social mobility to delivering a property-owning democracy.

[Rachel Blake]

I would be grateful if the hon. Member would expand on how that driving value of aspiration came into the Conservative Government when they were completely failing to address the urgent need for leasehold reform over the past five years, when so many people have been suffering and unable to sell their leasehold homes because of the cladding on those homes. Where was the aspiration then?

[Mr Bedford]

I will give the hon. Member an example of Conservative aspiration. My family never owned their own homes—my grandparents did not own their own home—but Margaret Thatcher gave them the opportunity to do so. She gave many people like my grandparents the opportunity to aspire, to achieve and to own their own homes. That is the aspiration we need to get back to as a country. Every generation of Conservatives has understood this ambition. It is not our background that shapes our future. This is equality of opportunity in action, not the equality of outcome that the Labour party desire so much.

We cannot talk about aspiration without celebrating the Prime Minister who understood it best. Mrs Thatcher gave people the freedom to own their own future. She rewarded hard work through lower taxes, turned millions of people into shareholders through privatisation and made dreams of home ownership a reality for many across the country with her right-to-buy scheme. Mrs Thatcher just got it; she understood human nature. She understood that people are ambitious and she knew that when we trust individuals and not the state, Britain succeeds.