Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to make an assessment of the level of investment in programmes to tackle rough sleeping that would result by imposing either (1) a one per cent stamp duty surcharge on non-resident property purchases, or (2) a three per cent stamp duty surcharge on non-resident property purchases; if so, when; and if not, why not.

The Government announced at Budget 2018 a new Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) surcharge of one per cent on non-residents buying residential property in England and Northern Ireland. This will help control house price growth and so help ensure those resident in the UK can get on the housing ladder.

A costing for how much the surcharge will raise will be produced at a future fiscal event once the final design of the surcharge has been confirmed. This costing will follow the usual process for analysing the revenue impacts of new tax measures, including being subject to scrutiny from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The Government remains committed to ending rough sleeping. The Chancellor announced £54m of new funding to reduce homelessness and rough sleeping in last week’s Spending Round. This takes total resource funding to £422m next year – a real terms increase of 13%.