Stamp Duty Land Tax

Debate between Rachel Taylor and James Cleverly

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir James Cleverly]

You’ve gotta love ’em, haven’t you? Never seen a fence they would not sit on, never seen a position they would not contort around. “These are our principles”, they say, “but so are these, and so are these other ones as well.” It is that clarity that we value from the Liberal Democrats.

[Rachel Taylor]

I will be a little clearer on Labour’s principles: we will not be joining the Conservatives in the voting Lobby because we will not vote for unfunded tax cuts that predominantly serve the wealthy and do nothing to help first-time buyers or ordinary working people up and down the country.

[Sir James Cleverly]

That’s how you do it! That is how you actually have a position—it is the wrong position, but at least it is a position. The hon. Lady keeps talking about unfunded tax cuts, but she is getting her language back to front. We do not fund a tax cut, because it is the British people who fund Government spending, so when Government spending is eased, it eases the burden on the British taxpayer. It is spending that needs to be funded, not a reduction in spending.

I will reinforce what I thought were a number of strong interventions in support of the motion. I was struck by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) speaking about his own experience trying to get on the housing ladder and how his enthusiasm was diminished by the realisation that stamp duty was going to make it even more difficult. The hon. Member for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) made a legitimate point that this tax affects different parts of the country very differently. He made the fair point that there will be many parts of the country where it is not typical that people pay stamp duty land tax, or a significant quantum or scale of it, but that is not a good reason to deny this reduction in cost to those people in the country who do. Although there might not be many in his constituency, I guarantee that he would not have to travel far before he starts to meet people who are being dissuaded from purchasing properties because of stamp duty land tax. Certainly for Members representing constituencies near big cities, wherever they are across the country, or constituencies in the south, significant numbers of people pay this tax.

It has been mentioned by many Conservative Members—too many to single out—that this proposal would positively impact not just the people who pay, or may pay, stamp duty land tax. I guarantee that almost all of us can imagine the streetscape that I am about to describe from our constituencies. There are perhaps Victorian or Edwardian semi-detached or detached houses on what used to be the periphery of the town or city before it expanded beyond that. It will typically be a band of properties populated disproportionately by older couples or older people, who have often been in the constituency for many decades. Their children have moved out and they are now under-occupying those properties with two, three or perhaps even four bedrooms spare, but they are deterred from downsizing because they fear the stamp duty that they will have to pay. Estimates show that 2.8 million people would consider downsizing—or rightsizing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor said—if stamp duty were removed. We would then have a ripple effect throughout the housing market, freeing up family homes for people who are currently in overcrowded accommodation.

Not only that, but the London School of Economics estimates that for every housing transaction, an estimated £6,000 of economic activity is pumped into the local market, with local builders doing refurbishments, perhaps doing extensions and fitting new bathrooms and kitchens, and people buying soft furnishings and white goods—the sorts of things that people buy when they move. What type of business typically provides those goods and services? It is local businesses—small and medium-sized enterprises embedded in their communities. These are the people who are being denied economic activity because this tax is stifling the property market.

We need liquidity in the property market. We need people buying and selling. We need people spending money with local businesses in local shops across the whole of the country. That is what reducing the tax burden on people does; it is what removing the stamp duty land tax will achieve.

Yet on the Government and Liberal Democrat Benches, Members are contorting themselves to find excuses not to reduce this burdensome tax, and I genuinely do not understand why. Some 2.8 million people could release their homes on to the market; if each of those homes had two or three spare bedrooms, that would immediately eclipse the 1.5 million homes that Labour is desperately trying to convince the country will be built under its tenure. It could be done almost immediately, without a brick being laid, and—more importantly—without the need for any Government subsidy.

That is what the House is saying no to, but not those on the Conservative Benches. We on these Benches understand aspiration. The Conservative party has always been the party of aspiration. We have always been the party that helped people to get on and up the housing ladder—a noble and normal aspiration, and one that we support, even if other hon. Members do not support it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Rachel Taylor and James Cleverly

Report stage
Friday 20th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir James Cleverly]

I need to make progress.

A number of professional bodies have said they do not have the capacity. They do not have enough people to fill the slots that this Bill demands of them.

Secondly, in terms of fundamental changes, are hon. and right hon. Members genuinely happy to write the blank cheque that this Bill demands? It is normal for the Secretary of State of a Government Department to decide when a piece of legislation comes into force, and they make their decision based on the state’s ability to deliver that legislation. Commencement dates matter; they are not just some arbitrary dates on a piece of paper. I understand people’s desire to ensure that this cannot be lost down the back of the sofa when it comes to Government work, but when the people on whom we would rely to deliver this Bill say that they are not ready and that they do not feel that they will be ready—they do not have enough people and they do not have enough capacity, so they will have to take resource from current provisions to move across to this provision, which will be driven by a statutory requirement and a locked-in commencement date—we should listen. If the people who are going to make this work—and work as well as we hope it will, if it becomes legislation—say that they are not confident that they can make it happen, we should be very careful about demanding that they prioritise this. That is what this legislation says: they will prioritise this above any other work that they might otherwise do.

Thirdly—the hon. Member for Spen Valley hinted at this, and I mentioned it in an intervention in an earlier stage of the Bill—on coercion, on the pressure that individuals put on themselves and on medical professionals raising the issue, we know that there are inequalities in health provision already, none of which will be addressed by the Bill. There are certain communities, and certain people in those communities, particularly women, who are overly deferential to men and to men in authority. Can we genuinely say that we have no fear whatsoever about a potentially vulnerable woman sitting in front of a medical professional who raises assisted dying? Even if they do not imply that it is the right thing for her to do, the very fact that they bring it up will have a significant influence on that woman’s thinking. We cannot believe that the effect will be completely neutral across all communities.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

With the safeguards that have been put in the Bill, there will be a panel that looks at those issues and asks questions like, “Has your doctor persuaded you to do this?” Do we honestly think that a social worker, psychiatrist or lawyer is totally incapable of finding coercion? That is exactly what the panel is there to do, and that is exactly what those safeguards will provide.

[Sir James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, but I refer her to my second question. Those bodies say that they do not have the people to populate those panels, yet that is what the commencement date demands. The principle of having a person or group of people to protect against coercion is important—I am talking not just about coercion, but about how people perceive people in authority—but royal colleges and social workers have told us that they do not believe they will be ready to put those guardrails in place by the commencement date. We should listen to them.

This is an important debate that has stimulated an important conversation, which demands our full attention, but I do not believe that the Bill is ready to go to the other place. It is interesting that there are both proponents and opponents of the Bill who hope that the Lords will make significant changes to the Bill. That should surely set off alarm bells.

Ultimately, because the Bill is such a fundamental change, we need to ensure that there is an enhanced level of scrutiny of its detail. We all want to avoid and alleviate suffering wherever possible, but I do not believe that we have had the opportunity to get the Bill into the right shape. That is why I will oppose Third Reading, and I encourage others to do likewise.