"Thank you for calling me, Mr Hoyle. I am being called rather sooner than I imagined; indeed, I did not even necessarily imagine that I would be making a speech in full detail, but making use of my House of Commons Library notes I have hastily prepared something, particularly on …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"I am happy to enlighten the hon. Gentleman, whose intervention falls into the category of a nice try. I think he is referring to the Opposition motion on this issue that we debated five or so weeks ago. The Government amendment to that motion made it crystal clear that, in …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"Thank you, Mr Hoyle. Your advice is always given with good heart and accepted freely.
New clause 5 highlights the Labour party’s conversion to the principle of a mansion tax. I said that the new clause was an innovation. Unfortunately, I am a veteran of Finance Bills. I have obviously …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"I assure the hon. Gentleman that I have righteous enthusiasm for the policy, because it is a Liberal Democrat policy that I have enthusiastically supported for the past three and a half years. How many weeks has he been an enthusiastic proponent of the mansion tax—10, 12, nine? How many …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"My argument is straightforward: I do not know what the Labour party’s variant of the mansion tax would be. Moreover, the Labour party does not seem to know, either; otherwise, why on earth would it frame new clause 5 in a way that asks the Treasury to explain how it …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"To answer the hon. Gentleman directly, when the coalition Government came to office they had to make some quick decisions about what was essentially an economic emergency. We were left with a situation in which the last Government were borrowing £1 for every £4 that they were spending. We simply …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"The mansion tax, as the name suggests, is a tax on mansions. If a farmhouse on agricultural land was of mansion proportions and, whether it was in Carmarthen or elsewhere, was valued at more than £2 million, it would fall within the scope of a mansion tax, but the agricultural …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman is essentially asking me a variant of the question asked by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). He mentions agricultural buildings. Clearly, a mansion tax is a residential property tax: a tax on the building that the landowner—the farmer, the rich individual or …..." Stephen Williams - View Speech