Stamp Duty Land Tax (Reduction)

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I beg to move amendment (a), Leave out paragraph 3.

I appreciate the contribution from the Minister. The amendment, which is supported by right hon. and hon. Friends, concerns a particular element of the proposal which is of great concern not just to me but to many Members on both sides of the House and from different parts of the country. It is, I expect, the unintended consequence of the proposal on communities already suffering under the weight of excessive second home ownership and the explosion of Airbnbs eating up the long-term rented market. There is obviously a debate to be had, which we will have next, about the proposal itself, the stamp duty cut, for which there are arguments that I fully understand. What I am concerned about is that the cut will apply to all properties, including to people buying their second, third, 22nd or 23rd home. My concern is not because I am consumed by the politics of envy, but because I am consumed with concern for my community and many others like it.

Since the pandemic, we have seen the explosion of a problem that was already difficult to start with: the rising proportion of second homes in communities such as mine. The former Chancellor and soon to be new Prime Minister—I congratulate him—my constituency neighbour, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), made an error at the beginning of the pandemic when he created the temporary stamp duty holiday. The immediate result was that in the first few months of the pandemic 80% of all house sales in my constituency, and in communities like it, were in the second home market. I hope and assume that was not the intention of the former Chancellor and soon-to-be Prime Minister, but that was the consequence. Furthermore, we saw a 32% increase in the number of holiday lets during the pandemic, up from a huge number to start off with in the lakes and the dales. That is the collapse of the long-term private rented market into the Airbnb market.

I will be trying, by various means, to get the Government to bring in new categories of planning use to control excessive second home ownership and the collapse of the long-term private rented sector into the Airbnb sector. My aim today is to stop the Government making it any worse. If my amendment is not agreed to, the Government’s proposal in the next debate will be to do some good things, but also to accidentally do some bad things. That bad thing will be to add fuel to the fire of the explosion of excessive second home ownership in places such as the lakes and the dales, Cornwall, Northumberland, the Peak district and every other part of our country of a similar kind.

What an explosion of second home ownership of this kind means is that our communities are robbed of their full-time population. We see people forced out, unable to find or afford a home where they can raise their family. We then see footfall and demand for local services, such as the local pub, the local post office, bus services and local schools, massively reduced as a consequence. We see schools closed and communities hollowed out. Not only is it awful, upsetting and utterly regrettable to see families forced out of the places they were raised—I deal with these cases, case by case, and see people in extreme housing need because our existing housing stock has been gobbled up by second homes and holiday lets—but we also see a material impact on our economy and the consequences for our workforce.

At the moment, Morecambe Bay hospitals have 25% of all beds blocked. Why? Because social care is in crisis. Why? Because there is nowhere available for anybody who works in social care to be able to live in our communities. I can tell the Minister that 63% of all hospitality and tourism businesses in the lakes last year had to operate below capacity. Why? Because they could not find the staff. Why? Because there is nowhere for those people to live.

A housing crisis that already existed before the pandemic has become a catastrophe, in part because of an error made by the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) at the beginning of the pandemic. He created a stamp duty holiday that created that boom. My amendment gives the Government the ability to do good without accidentally doing terrific harm to areas such as the lakes and the dales. It is an opportunity for the Government to prove that they do not take rural communities for granted. I hope that the Minister will hear what I have to say and act accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

I am always happy to engage with colleagues across the House. As I was saying, the Government have taken meaningful action on a range of issues, most recently through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will introduce a council tax second homes premium.

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful to the Minister for the tone of his response, but I am disappointed that it looks as though he will not accept my amendment, not least because it lays the ground to take seriously the points made by the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) about proactively tackling excessive second-home ownership and holiday lets. We need to do something now at least to not make the situation worse, and I fear that, unamended, the Minister’s proposals will make things worse. We have been trying to amend the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill in Committee so that there are measures that can control, through planning, the number of second homes and holiday lets in communities such as mine, but we have had no success so far. Will he meet me and others who are concerned to look at how we can table amendments and make proposals through the Treasury that would make a material difference to communities such as mine?