Rural Roads

Rebecca Paul Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for introducing this very important topic. He made some important points in his speech, and he was on to a strong one when he talked about the importance of remoteness and rurality as a factor in local authority costs that should be taken into account with funding. As we have heard from several hon. Members, the Government’s changes to local government finances are going to have a hard impact on rural areas that are already struggling with this critical issue.

We have heard from hon. Members from many counties today. I am going to list them all, because it illustrates the national nature of the issue, although we all have the temptation to think that it is down to which parties run local authorities and which do not. We have heard two examples each from Shropshire and Sussex; examples from Surrey, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Kent; two each from Wiltshire, Yorkshire, Somerset; and examples from Nottinghamshire, East Sussex, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, the Scottish highlands, Cambridgeshire and Cumbria. That is an enormously diverse geographical list and shows the sheer scale of the problem that we are facing. In my Oxfordshire constituency of Didcot and Wantage, I have repeated examples of major problems with roads that really drive people mad, particularly the A417 through Mellors Garage, Challow station, Stanford, and Shellingford crossroads. There are also problems on the A417 through Upton and Blewbury, and on many roads in Didcot. They are just a few examples.

Many residents look to the current council for responsibility, but the reality is that this is a long-term issue and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) mentioned, it is the legacy of the previous Conservative Administration who, in Oxfordshire, implemented a “managed decline” policy in 2014. That was partly driven by national funding constraints. Today’s debate proves that this is a nationwide crisis and that we should treat it as such.

Poorly lit, often narrow and fast rural roads are far more dangerous than urban ones. According to road safety charity Brake, road users are three times more likely to be killed on a rural road than an urban road. That is an indictment of the previous Conservative Government’s utter neglect of Britain’s roads, with the total maintenance backlog now standing at more than £18 billion. The 2026 annual local authority road maintenance survey estimates that 16% of the local road network in England and Wales is “in poor condition”. It is costing road users dearly, with research suggesting that UK drivers are paying, on average, more than £300 a year to repair damage caused by potholes, and rural drivers highlight worse conditions than urban areas.

It is not just drivers. A 2022 survey by Cycling UK found that

“21% of cyclists have been involved in an accident because of a pothole”

and among those, 22% suffered a personal injury; 88% of riders reported having to take a dangerous manoeuvre to avoid a road defect, and 63% experienced bike damage due to poor road surfaces. The current road maintenance guidance focuses primarily on when defects damage motor vehicles—a criterion that fails to capture the far lower threshold at which cyclists can be catastrophically harmed. Perhaps adoption of that higher standard for repairs could also move us closer to a greater focus on prevention and preventive works.

This issue relates to a wider crisis in local government finances, with the cost of social care and special educational needs provision accounting for an ever-growing proportion of local authority budgets. In that context, the Labour Government’s decision to cut Oxfordshire county council’s central Government funding by £24.1 million over three years is a grave concern. Clearly, money is a big part of the problem we face, but perhaps the Minister can share what the Government are doing to learn from other countries and to look at better approaches to road design, maintenance and repair.

[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

A key point to make is that potholes are often a symptom that roads have not been resurfaced at the right time. In reality, we have billions of pounds in community infrastructure levy funds that are sitting across the country, often just earning interest. They are not being invested in resurfacing roads or our drainage system. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we can better spend that community infrastructure levy money and ensure that it is put into roads? That often means making sure that—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I noticed that the hon. Lady arrived very late to the debate. It is not allowed, particularly in a massively oversubscribed debate like this, to come in and intervene.

Stamp Duty Land Tax

Rebecca Paul Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Rebecca Smith]

Does my hon. Friend agree that when the policy was announced at our party conference in October, it was the first solid political idea to have come forward from any political party since the last election that genuinely offers aspiration for hard-working families? We are talking about not just hard-working families who need to get on the housing ladder in the first place, but those in constituencies like hers and mine who are desperate to expand their families and continue contributing to the society we all live in.

[Rebecca Paul]

I thank my hon. Friend for that pertinent point. This is proper Conservative policy. This is the kind of thing everyone in this country is clamouring for—[Hon. Members: “More!”] This party is delivering that under our new leadership. For too long, stamp duty has been a dead weight on the housing market, a tax on aspiration and a barrier to the kind of home ownership that gives people a genuine stake in their community. It is time that we abolished it on primary residences.

Surely we can all agree that our housing market is not working as it should. Far too many young people feel locked out, priced out and increasingly disillusioned. The average age of a first-time buyer in England is now 34, up by nearly a decade from where it was 40 years ago. In London, it is even higher, and across the country 20% fewer 25 to 34-year-olds own a home today than was the case in 2000.

I have skin in the game: I have three children and I want them to be able to buy a house without coming to mummy and daddy to help them out.

[Jack Rankin]

I bet my hon. Friend does—she should declare an interest!

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Paul]

Yes, I should declare that interest.

This amounts to an economic failure, but also to a social failure. Home ownership gives people stability, autonomy and long-term security. It encourages saving, it strengthens families and it fosters pride and a sense of genuine community in our towns and villages. Abolishing stamp duty will save families thousands of pounds and put the many benefits of home ownership back into reach for the next generation.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Does my hon. Friend agree that cutting stamp duty will not only benefit young people aspiring to home ownership, but act as an incentive for older people to downsize, freeing up larger family homes and making them available for families that need to increase the size of the house they own?

[Rebecca Paul]

I will make that exact same point later in my speech, and I completely agree that that is a relevant change that will come from this policy.

I clearly see in my constituency the way in which stamp duty chokes and distorts the market as it penalises those who move, creates a disincentive for older people to downsize and deters growing families from upsizing into more suitable family homes. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has put it, in a crowded field, stamp duty land tax is

“the most economically damaging tax in the UK.”

I cannot disagree with that.

My constituents feel that acutely. Stamp duty is all the more painful in an area where the average house price is now above £490,000. The young families I speak to, who have made the move out of London and settled in towns such as Redhill or Reigate, have been hit with eye-watering up-front costs that made those moves extremely challenging. Many more will have found it impossible. That is why our policy matters.

We intend to strip away one of the fundamental barriers to family life in this country. Eliminating stamp duty will save the average first-time buyer in the south-east around £4,000 and as much as £18,000 in London. Unlike the Labour party, we will not punish those looking to move further up the ladder with frozen thresholds and stealth tax hikes.

I would, of course, be expected to paint a suitably positive view of the proposal, but what do the experts think? Zoopla’s Richard Donnell has rightly said,

“More home moves would support economic growth and the ambition to build more homes.”

The Institute of Economic Affairs went further, calling this

“the single best reform any government could make to Britain’s tax system.”

Indeed, the case seems so strong that one has to wonder why the Government oppose us on this.

The truth is that Labour has always been the party of higher taxes on homes. It reversed the Conservative policy that raised the first-time buyer threshold to £425,000. It is freezing stamp duty thresholds in real terms, dragging more and more people into paying this punitive tax each year. While it talks endlessly about house building, its actions tell a different story. Not only is it on track to miss its self-imposed housing targets, but the Housing Secretary tried to block 237 new homes in his constituency despite promising to “build, baby, build”. By contrast, the Conservatives have delivered 2.8 million homes over the past 14 years, including nearly 750,000 affordable homes, and we pledge to go further.

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

I represent a rural constituency where young people are constantly forced to move away from the villages they grew up in. Will the hon. Lady explain to me where in rural Britain those affordable homes were located, where young people could move to and make a family life? For 14 years, they were shut out of the communities they grew up in.

[Rebecca Paul]

The hon. Member raises an important point. We have this situation where a lot of young people are forced to go elsewhere; indeed, the area where I live is very expensive and I am worried that my children will be forced to look elsewhere. That is why it is so important that we now focus on the future.

[Gregory Stafford]

Is that not the fundamental point, and why the comments made earlier about downsizing are so important? This tax stops people downsizing, which means that people are not moving out and not freeing up the houses that young people could and should be moving into.

[Rebecca Paul]

My hon. Friend makes the point very well. Going back to the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), we need to take this seriously. We can either look back the whole time, or we can look forward and think about what policies are right for the people of this country and deliver for the people of this country.

[Mr Snowden]

That point shows the complexity of the issue. Painting it with “14 years this” and “14 years that” does not represent what is happening. In Fylde, we have seen the largest amount of house building taking place in the villages and small towns, because developers know that they can get planning permission there and sell the houses for a lot more than they could 5 or 10 miles in a different direction. In some areas, there has been significant overdevelopment on the green belt, and we should not use individual examples as a reason to redefine vast chunks of the green belt as grey belt simply in order to concrete over our countryside.

[Rebecca Paul]

My hon. Friend’s excellent point is pertinent to my constituency as well, which is full of amazing and beautiful green-belt land. We are suffering from what this Government have done on housing targets, which have doubled in Reigate and Banstead while going down in London. That means that we are building more homes, but not for local people and not for the children the hon. Member for Hexham mentioned, who want to stay close to home. It is for people living in London who then move out to Reigate and Banstead.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that in the south-west of England, the Government have reduced the building target for Bristol city council, which has a lot of Labour members, and have instead increased the building target for rural Somerset, where there are few Labour members, by 40%? Does she share my concern that Labour is fiddling the housing targets for political advantage?

[Rebecca Paul]

I thank my hon. Friend for yet another relevant and important point. I urge the Government to think logically about what they are trying to achieve. We all support the ambition to build more homes and recognise the problem that needs to be solved. However, the way we do it is really important, and it is important that we have those homes in the right places and that we set the targets in a logical and meaningful way. With this policy, and others like it, we are offering the public a clear choice between a party that wants to unlock aspiration and reward the hard work of our young people and a party that clings to economically damaging taxes because its own Back Benchers refuse to make even the smallest concessions on out-of-control spending.

We on the Conservative Benches are clear that any significant change to tax policy must be properly costed. The public finances are in a challenging place, and reckless commitments only add to the prevailing sense of uncertainty. That is why it is so important to emphasise that our intention to scrap stamp duty on primary residences is costed, fully funded and fully paid for through our £47 billion savings package. Our plan is clear: it is costed and it is rooted in a belief that home ownership should be within reach of the next generation, just as it was for our own.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Paul Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

As is the normal process in developing any policy, we consider a range of options, but we have decided that this gets the balance right: raising revenue in a fair way while offering generous reliefs within the agricultural property relief and business property relief system. Let me just say that, when I heard the hon. Lady stand up and begin a sentence with, “We Liberal Democrats oppose”, I was hardly surprised.

[Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of levels of Government debt interest payments on public finances.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

23. What recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of levels of Government debt interest payments on public finances.

[Rebecca Paul]

I thank the Chancellor for that response. This year, interest on debt is expected to total £111 billion, which is 8.3% of total public spending. What are the Chancellor’s plans to rebuild confidence in the gilt market, and how confident is she that we will not be reliving the worst bits of the 1970s?

[Rachel Reeves]

The best way to make sure that we continue to have confidence in the gilt markets is to keep the Tories and Liz Truss as far away from running the economy as possible. We have brought stability back to the economy, and there have been five cuts in interest rates. This is in sharp contrast to the disaster of Liz Truss and the clown show that we witnessed at the Reform conference at the weekend. Those two parties would lose control of spending, and push up mortgage costs and inflation. They have done it before, and they would do it all over again.