A Conservative government would abolish stamp duty – saving homebuyers thousands of pounds and helping young people buy the first home of their own, Conservative leader Kemi Badenochhas announced. She set out dramatic plans to end this hated tax in her speech to the Conservative conferencein Manchester, as she launched a Tory fightback against Labour and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
As well as helping young people afford a home, Mrs Badenoch said the abolition of stamp duty would also make it easier for older people to “downsize” and move into smaller homes, freeing up properties for younger people. “That is how we will help achieve the dream of home ownership for millions,” she said.
Mrs Badenoch made the announcement as part of her vow to lead a Government on the side of working people, if she can win the next general election. She also set out a plan to end NHS strikes by banning doctors from striking, and to ensure “brilliant schools and teachers” had the freedom to get on with teaching.
Earlier this week, her party conference heard about plans to deliver savings of £47 billion. They include ending benefit payments for foreigners, helping people with minor health conditions into work and reducing the foreign aid budget. Today, the Conservative leader set out how those savings will be used. She pledged to use at least half the cash to cut Britain’s deficit, ending the huge increase in debts which means the UK currently spends more than £100 billion every year just on interest and servicing the debt. But other money will be spent on growing the economy, including on tax cuts.
Setting out her plans for government, she said a Tory government would scrap Labour’s VAT tax hike on independent schools, and Labour’s death tax on family farms. Her Government would also scrap Labour’s new job-killing employment laws, she said.
And it would reverse Labour’s increase in businesses rates which are killing high streets, said Mrs Badenoch. She warned there were 6.5 million working-age adults on benefits “being paid to sit at home all day”.
A Conservative government would stop paying benefits to people who were not British, she said, and stop people claiming they cannot work due to a minor mental health condition.
It is a “national tragedy” that 5,000 new people are signing on to out-of-work sickness benefits every working day, she said.
Mrs Badenoch also pledged to ensure police focused on cutting crime, in particular by catching shoplifters and expanding stop and search to get knives off the streets. Mrs Badenoch said the Conservatives would “take Britain into a new era of prosperity and security”.
She warned that the party must “be frank” about the problems that the UK faces. In past there were opportunities for people who worked hard, and British people were proud of their country, she said. But this was not true any more.
And she warned that other nations, from India to Poland, were developing their economies and moving forward while the UK was in danger of taking its success for granted.
The UK economy could not be “addicted to migration”, she said. The UK was not just taking in doctors and scientists, but was taking in “hundreds of thousands” of people, some with “no skills at all”, thanks to a “broken” immigration system, said Mrs Badenoch.
She defended the record of the last Conservative government, saying it cut the deficit and got millions of people into work. But the party needed to remember who it was fighting for – people “who work hard and do the right thing,” she said.
Previous Conservative governments had cleared up “the mess left by Labour” and the current Government was making a huge mess of its own, she said.
Mrs Badenoch said people still didn’t know what Sir Keir Starmer stands for – and claimed he doesn’t know himself.
Highlighting tax rises already introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Mrs Badenoch said Ms Reeves “will give us all something to cry about” in her November “Budget of doom”.
But she admitted the Conservatives were struggling to benefit from Labour’s unpopularity, because voters were “still angry” with her party.