Stamp Duty Land Tax

Debate between James Murray and Bradley Thomas

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the state pension would be under threat were the Conservatives to win the next general election. He is also right to draw the House’s attention to comments made by Conservative Members at their party conference. They may think that people are not listening to what they say at those conference fringe meetings, but we get the reports so we know exactly what they said.

From their recent conference, we know that they think that they can find some £47 billion through cuts to public spending, as the shadow Chancellor said, but let us look at the detail. At least half of those fantasy savings come from a welfare plan that amounts to a menu with no prices: a list of measures that the Conservatives say will raise £23 billion in total, but with no breakdown whatsoever of how. In June last year, just as they were on their way out of Downing Street, they said that they could cut £12 billion from the welfare bill. Now they have doubled that without explanation. Frankly, if the shadow Chancellor thinks that he has any credibility on this matter, he is sadly mistaken. He is far from the best person to make this argument, given that he personally oversaw the biggest increase in benefits spending in decades during his time as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

The Minister is in no position to lecture on reducing the size of the state, given that when Labour attempted to reduce the welfare bill, it marched all of its MPs up the hill, only to march them down again, when it buckled under the pressure from its own Back Benchers.

[James Murray]

As Members from both sides of the House know, we are determined to get people back into work, because that is the way to bring the welfare and benefits bills down, and to make people better off. What is not the right thing to do for this country is to follow the Conservatives’ plan for £47 billion of cuts, for which they have no plans and that would represent nothing less than a return to austerity. If their £47 billion were to come from cuts to public services, that would mean 85,700 fewer nurses, cutting every police officer in the country twice and cutting the entire armed forces. Funnily enough, none of that detail is in their motion today.

To have proposed the motion is a shame for British politics, because with the Conservatives’ long history, they really should know better. Were it to be the Greens, Plaid Cymru or Reform proposing policies with little regard for the consequences, I would not be surprised because they have never had a chance to implement them, but to see the party that was in charge for 14 years acting this recklessly shows just how far it has fallen.

Family Businesses

Debate between James Murray and Bradley Thomas

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I return to my point that three quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief, or agricultural property relief and business property relief, will not pay any more inheritance tax in 2026-27 as a result of these changes. In terms of the extra inheritance tax liability, which is what the data about claims points towards, the data is clear that the majority of estates will not be affected. As I mentioned to several of the hon. Member’s colleagues on Conservative Benches, the data is set out in quite some detail in the letter that the Chancellor wrote to the Treasury Committee. If she has a look at the data in that letter, that might answer some of her questions.

I will briefly finish my comments in relation to business rates. I was thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) for intervening to point out what we inherited from the previous Government: a situation where relief for retail, hospitality and leisure was chopping and changing year to year. Indeed, from April this year there was to be a cliff edge, so it would have gone away entirely—according to the plans we inherited from the previous Government, there was to be no relief at all after April. We therefore decided to extend the relief at a fiscally responsible level for a further year, ahead of our permanent reforms coming in.

While we are on the subject of hospitality, let me address the absurd notion in the Opposition’s motion—I do not believe the shadow Chancellor mentioned this in his comments—that the pint is under threat. The pint is part of our nation, and we do not need a new law to protect the pint any more than we need a new law to say that the sun must rise in the morning—I wonder whether the Opposition Members who drafted that part of the motion may have been close to a number of points when they did so. In any case, I am proud to reject the insinuation in their motion and to put on record—if it needs to be said—that pints are at the heart of our nation and, under Labour, they will stay that way.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

The Government continually talk about how the Chancellor has shaved one penny off a pint, but many publicans in my constituency tell me that they are having to find an extra £2,000 a month for additional costs as a result of the Government’s Budget. Does the Minister accept that a penny off a pint is futile if there are no pubs left to drink in?

[James Murray]

What I accept, as I said earlier, is that our difficult decision on employer national insurance contributions will have impacts on different businesses across the country. But the hon. Member should welcome—businesses across the country will welcome this—the extra support that we have provided through draught relief to support those pubs to succeed. That is an essential part not just of our economic activity across the country, but of our social lives and enjoying pints. I know that enjoying pints matters very much to Opposition Front Benchers.

I will try to make some progress, because there is quite a lot to cover in the Opposition’s motion. On employment, the motion seeks to undermine the Employment Rights Bill, so let me directly address those points. The Bill is the first phase in delivering our plan to make work pay, supporting employers, workers and unions to get Britain moving forward to bring greater predictability to the lives of working people. While I recognise that the flexibility offered by zero-hours contracts, zero-hours arrangements and low-hours contracts can benefit both workers and employers, without proper safeguards that flexibility can be one-sided, and it is far too often the workers who end up bearing all the financial risk.

That is why we have committed to ending this one-sided flexibility, to ensure that all jobs provide a baseline of security so that workers can better plan their lives and their finances. That includes ending exploitative zero-hours contracts. We will deliver the commitment through two measures: first, a right to guaranteed hours where the number of hours offered reflects the hours worked by the worker during a reference period; and secondly, new rights to offer reasonable notice of shifts, with proportionate payment for shifts that are cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice.

I will try to draw this to a close. [Interruption.] Opposition Members might not want to hear it but, out of respect to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will bring my remarks to a close. The motion exposes a Conservative party that is happy to object to the difficult decisions that we have taken but totally unable to offer an alternative plan of its own. The debate has also allowed me to set out, on behalf of the Government, how we are moving fast to take the sometimes difficult but necessary decisions to deliver our plan for change.

We are taking the right decisions to fix our public finances, to restore stability and fiscal responsibility, and to ensure that both businesses and their employees can work productively and securely to drive economic growth. The changes that we have begun making are essential for economic growth, so we reject the Opposition’s motion. We are determined to move further and faster to make people across the UK more secure and better off.