Stamp Duty Land Tax Bill

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for his introduction to this Bill—I am only sorry he was not breathless with excitement today as he was last week when we first debated the stamp duty changes. He is, however, right not to spoil us with a repeat performance, and I was amused to see that we all arrived super-early for this afternoon’s debate.

I wish to indicate, as I did at the outset of last week’s debate, that we support these measures, and will be supporting the Bill on Second Reading and during its remaining stages. The Minister mentioned the procedural mechanism adopted to give effect to these changes: the Government moved a resolution under the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968, which was passed last week in order to give immediate effect to the stamp duty measures unveiled in the autumn statement. We debated that motion the day after the autumn statement and today we move on to the Bill’s Second Reading. The Government have proceeded with a stand-alone Bill rather than await the next Finance Bill in order to give immediate effect to the stamp duty changes and thereby prevent distortions within the housing market. We recognise the importance of that and support the mechanisms adopted to give effect to this measure.

As the Minister said, stamp duty has been charged at a single rate on the whole purchase price of a property, with different rates for different value bands. When a property exceeds the threshold for a higher rate of duty, tax is charged at the higher rate on the whole value of the sale—this is the so-called ‘slab basis’—rather than on the part of the price above the threshold, which is the so-called ‘slice basis’. The tax has been charged on the slab basis for more than 40 years, and the slab basis design has caused much consternation and complaint, with regular calls for reform.

In recent years, stamp duty has come under the spotlight much more because of the increasing burden the tax has placed on home buyers, especially first-time buyers, as a result of the huge increases in house prices. Between 1997 and 2005, house price inflation averaged more than 10% a year, and the proportion of property transactions attracting stamp duty rose from about half to more than three quarters during roughly the same period. In order to assist buyers, and first-time buyers in particular, we have seen a number of measures designed to alleviate some of the burden caused by stamp duty under its previous structure. They focused primarily on thresholds and stamp duty holidays: the threshold was doubled in 2005; it was temporarily increased by £50,000 for one year in 2008; and it was doubled again for first-time buyers for three years from March 2010.

The burden of stamp duty, however, has continued to be significant, increasing by 30% between 2009-10 and 2013-14. The continued growth in the housing market has been the reason for the increasing stamp duty burden. In that context, today’s reform is sensible and has attracted support from across the House. SDLT rates will now only apply to the part of the property’s selling price that falls within each value band, and new rates and thresholds have been introduced.

I have a number of questions on specific elements of the changes, and I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will deal with them when she responds to the debate. The changes came in with immediate effect on 4 December. The Government have explained that those who had exchanged contracts before 4 December but who were completing on or after that date will be able to choose whether the old or the new rules apply. Will the Minister update us on how many people she anticipates will opt for one or other of those options, and what impact the changes have had on property transactions in the period immediately following the autumn statement?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury made it clear both last week and this afternoon how Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has been giving advice on the implications of this reform. I think he said that the calculator on the Government website had been used 500,000 times last week. That figure has now gone up to 880,000. He also told us that the HMRC call centre was manned until midnight on 3 December when the changes took effect, and that HMRC specialists responded to 250 inquiries by telephone, and all but 3% of them were resolved immediately. Will the Minister update us on whether the remaining handful of inquiries have been followed up, and on what points were members of the public or their advisers seeking clarification? It would be helpful for the House to understand how the public are responding to these changes.

I also wish to press the Minister on the revenue implications of the measures. It is estimated that, in 2014-15, the reform will cost £395 million, which rises to around £760 million in 2015-16. That is a significant amount of money at a time when the public finances remain challenging to say the least. How certain is the Minister that the other measures in the autumn statement, which the Government say will raise enough revenue to offset the cost of this measure, will in fact raise the amounts that they hope? Today, the Government have published the draft Bill for the new diverted profits tax, which they say will raise £1.3 billion over the scorecard period. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility says that those numbers are uncertain, and, in its fiscal outlook, gives a new rating system to reflect the degrees of uncertainty over some of the figures in the autumn statement. For the diverted profits tax and the SDLT numbers, for example, it gives a medium to high uncertainty rating. What impact will that have, and how confident is the Minister that we will not have future debates on the failure of some of these measures to live up to the Government’s claims?

We have just heard how these changes will apply only to residential properties. The Institute for Fiscal Studies and others have queried why the changes have not been extended to cover commercial property, too. When I raised that point last week, the Minister said that the Government were not persuaded of the case, but it does seem odd to be running two different systems for the same tax, especially when the Government have acknowledged, as we all have, that the slab structure has a very distorting effect.

The Government say that the slab stamp duty system had a negative impact on labour mobility. Why do they think that the same will not happen in relation to business mobility? Perhaps the Exchequer Secretary can give us some more detail on the Government’s thinking in that regard. Has any assessment been done on the impact of retaining the slab system for commercial property, and on how competitive a place this country is in which to do business? Are there any plans to look at this matter again ahead of the general election?

Last week, the Minister said that the changes will have a positive effect on labour mobility and productivity, but the OBR says that the effect will be limited and highly uncertain, because while

“higher rates of stamp duty reduce households’ propensity to move, the adverse effect was confined to short-distance and non-job related moves—an impact less likely to have direct implications for GDP.”

Why do Ministers think slightly differently on the matter of labour mobility?

As the Minister has explained, the measures apply to Scotland only until April next year, as responsibility for this tax was devolved to the Scottish Government in the Scotland Act 2012. The Scottish Government have announced details of their land and buildings transaction tax, which also has a slice structure. The Scottish LBTT will apply to both residential and commercial properties. I want to press the Minister on what impact that will have on the rest of the UK when it comes to the question of where businesses choose to buy commercial properties. Is there a risk that England may be disadvantaged? The more favourable regime in Scotland, with the slice structure for commercial property, might mean that businesses avoid buying commercial property in England where the less favourable slab structure applies. What impact will that differential treatment of commercial property have on business mobility? Although devolution is an important process, as it puts decision making closer to the people whom it affects, we all want to avoid unhealthy tax competition among the nations of the UK. Has any assessment been carried out to consider the implications of such competition?

Of course none of the measures that we are debating today deals with the main cause of the biggest housing crisis for a generation, which is the lack of supply. Last week, I asked the Minister about how the stamp duty changes will impact on house prices. He said that there would be some impact, but that house prices are affected by a number of factors. I wish to press him and the Exchequer Secretary on the assumptions that the Government have made, and what outcome they would like to see when it comes to the interaction between the stamp duty changes and house prices. It looks like we are seeing a 1.4% increase in prices against a 1% reduction in stamp duty at the lower end, and it seems also that the tax take from stamp duty will rely on a 5% annual increase in property prices.

The OBR says that house prices will continue to rise faster than incomes, which will risk pushing home ownership further out of reach for many more people. Have the Government assessed how many more people might be priced out of the property market?

Measures to alleviate the burden on buyers are welcome, but we are experiencing the worst housing crisis for a generation and need much more action on housing supply if we are to get our housing market into better shape and help more young people and families to realise their dream of home ownership. I note the comments that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury made in his opening speech, but the truth is that we need to build many more homes than this Government have managed in their term of office. At the moment, the Government are primarily focusing on the demand side of the housing equation, whereas we, on the Opposition Benches, think that they should have taken the opportunity to balance things up on the supply side, too.

However, the measures before us today are reasonable and sensible. We support them, and I look forward to further debate in Committee.