Property Taxes

Yuan Yang Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride]

That is right. We live in a highly mobile world; it is easy for people with substantial wealth or money to invest to go anywhere in the world. We have to remain competitive, and this Government are making us less competitive. My right hon. Friend refers to unemployment, but just look at the record—should we have expected any more from this Government? No, not really. Every single Labour Government in history have left unemployment higher when they left office than it was at the time they came into office. What have we seen on unemployment since this Government have been in office? It has increased every single month since they have been in power.

[Yuan Yang (Earley and Woodley) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has spent the past five minutes circling around figures gathered by a consultancy that aids the super-wealthy to migrate from this country. Where is the Conservative party getting its economic ideas from? It speaks volumes that he has spent so much time up to this point speaking for the 15,000 high net worth individuals served by that consultancy; and his previous point was about inheritance tax, which is paid by only 4% of all estates in the UK. If he has any ideas, what will the Conservative party do to grow the economy for the benefit of all people in this country?

[Sir Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady asks where we are getting our ideas from; where we are not getting them from is from academics and researchers who believe in taxing wealth and who now sit there on the Treasury Bench, or in other places where they advise No. 10. They talk on a regular basis about taxing property, wealth, shares and assets of any description that they can think of, but that is the road to ruin. She asked where we get our ideas from, and I will tell her. I set up my own business in the 1980s, from absolutely nothing. I grew it from scratch, and then I took it over to America and grew a business there. I have lived, breathed and eaten business most of my life. I also go up and down the country to speak to other such businesses. They are the people who understand what needs to be done on the tax front and who have to live with the red tape that her party is bringing in to tie them down. They are the people whom this party is listening to.