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It is true that the Government have repeatedly expressed disappointment, but—still more disturbingly, in a sense—so has MI5. It is quite unusual for MI5 to intervene, by means of a speech by its head which made it very clear that MI5 was profoundly disappointed that this matter had not gone to court. Had it done so, it would have been the culmination of years of work done by MI5 to try to deal with Chinese espionage in Whitehall and Westminster.
I thank my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor for setting out the opening case for the Opposition’s position on stamp duty. I feel particularly passionate about this policy, which is one I put forward when I was running for the leadership of the Conservative party. Like all good ideas, it has been embraced by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I am particularly glad—this is a key point—that my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor and his team have worked hard to make sure that cutting stamp duty is not just a headline, but a fully costed and set out policy. The Leader of the Opposition has, I think very magnanimously, said that if the Government want to steal this idea and implement it now, they will get no opposition from us. I think that shows her typical generosity of spirit. The Government are clearly struggling to come up with credible economic plans of their own, so they are very welcome to steal our economic plans. I have been struck by the positive nature of this debate. As Conservative colleagues have noted, the expected wall of thoughtless opposition to this proposal has not materialised at quite the scale we expected. It has materialised in some instances, but that is only to be expected. We heard in a number of speeches, and I will refer to some contributions as I go through my speech, that Labour Members recognise that stamp duty is a bad tax, a counterproductive tax and a tax that has a dampening, drag-anchor effect on the housing market. However, they went on to say, “But we need the money.” They are desperate for the tax revenues, which I think shows the fundamental challenge that, frankly, Labour is going to have to deal with in November. If the Government cannot agree to get rid of this damaging, counterproductive tax, what tax will they be willing to reduce? If they are going to say to the House that, basically, there is not a single tax in the British system that they are willing to cut, reduce or remove, then the mask has slipped. Under a Labour Government, this country faces ever-increasing taxes—that is basically what they are saying. They admit that this is a bad tax, but they are not willing to vote for its removal because they want to see—they need to see, are desperate to see—taxes going up. That was fundamentally the argument put by many Government Members.
My hon. Friend is spot-on. That point was very well highlighted by my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), who said that official Opposition felt that this damaging and counterproductive tax should be removed. As I have said, my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has set out that that would be paid for by a reduction in the welfare bill—something that I know has universal support on our Benches. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater highlighted that a reduction in welfare spending is not only something that we think is a necessary and good idea, but something that Labour Front Benchers used to think was a necessary and a good idea until, with great leadership, they were told by their Back Benchers to stop thinking that it was a necessary and a good idea, and to start thinking that it was a terrible idea. Such leadership from the Back Benches is something that I admire from that party. If only Labour Front Benchers had anything like the spine of the Labour Back Benchers, the country might not be in quite such a dire economic state. Labour Members have basically said that they are unwilling to cut even the worst taxes because basically they want to see taxes go up. The Lib Dem position is yoga-like in its ability to bend—
Yes, pretzel-like. One after another, the speakers on the Lib Dem Benches stood up and said, “We agree that this is a bad tax. We agree that this is a counterproductive tax. We agree that it is a tax that needs to go.” I, and I suspect others on the Conservative Benches, thought, “Here we go. Here is the crescendo, the pièce de resistance,” and that those speeches would end by saying, “Which is why you will see us in the Lobby with you, ensuring that the motion is passed.” But that is not what we heard.
In a minute—I have a punchline to get to. That is not what we heard. What we heard was, “We think this is a bad tax that should be got rid of, but we are not going to vote to say it is a bad tax that should be got rid of, because blah”—which is always the Lib Dems’ punchline. I was waiting for an explosion of political integrity, only to be presented with a political damp squib.
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.
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.
It was the Conservatives who reduced the stamp duty burden—something that was reversed almost immediately when Labour came into office. The simple truth is that the Conservatives have always been the party of home ownership and aspiration: helping people to have a stake in not just the country and the economy, but their local communities; helping parents to stay closer to their own parents so that grandparents can see their grandchildren; creating flexibility so that when job opportunities are created around the country, people can actually move to those jobs without facing a financial penalty for doing so. That is what is at stake. That is what we are proposing. That is what the Conservatives will continually fight for, even in the face of opposition from Labour—a party that should be about aspiration and used to be about aspiration, but which has lost its way, drifted from the path of righteousness, and, if Labour Members do as they claim today, a party that will oppose the removal of what is regularly described by economic experts as the single most damaging tax on our books. I will conclude with this point. [Interruption.] I can continue if Members want. [Hon. Members: “More!”] No, I will conclude on this point. If Members opposite and to my left—both physically and metaphorically—are unwilling to countenance the removal of what is pretty much universally described as the single most counterproductive tax, what tax will they remove? The mask has slipped. Labour cannot and will not bring themselves to reduce any taxes. The British people will notice this, and so will the markets. The unwillingness of the Labour party to make any difficult decisions with regard to public spending or the reduction of the tax burden on the British people is not just painful for taxpayers themselves. It will be painful for our children and grandchildren, who are going to pay increased amounts of money to fund the spending that, as my colleagues have said, is the only way that the Chancellor can try to dig herself out of this hole. That will be a burden on generations to come. I suspect we will divide on this motion, and when we do the choice will be between a party that seeks to support aspiration, families, small businesses and the building trade, and those parties that oppose all those things and will increase the tax burden on British people, our children and grandchildren, and indeed the great-grandchildren of people alive today. That is not what my party is about or what this country should be about. I urge all those who want to do right by small businesses and future generations to support this motion and scrap this deeply counterproductive tax. I commend the motion to the House.
Have a word with your officials; that was very bad.
She missed out the word “fewer”. It is “fewer houses”.
I just want to clear up one small point. When the CPS originally decided to prosecute back in 2024, it was convinced on the basis of the then-required evidence that was in front of it that in this case, China was responsible, and therefore it posed a threat. What changed was the Roussev case, which redefined what the CPS needed to be able to say in order to go ahead with any further prosecution. It was made clear that all that needed to be done was to make the clear point that China was a persistent, continuous threat to the UK’s strategic interests. The reason why the CPS needed to make that statement had nothing to do with what had happened before; it was all about what resulted from the Roussev case. That was the key.
It is a particular pleasure that you should be in the Chair for this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, because like me and the others, some of whom have been named, you are sanctioned by a brutal Chinese Government. I think it is excellent that you are here to invigilate this debate and to keep us on track—forgive me if I go over. [Laughter.] I am not going to take the blandishments of the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger) who told us to look in the mirror. I stopped looking in the mirror a long, long time ago. In fact, when I was elected in 1992 I was told by a journalist at the Express that I could look in the mirror and see my career behind me. I feel like I have been walking backwards ever since. Can I just say, I think the whole principle that underlies all this is the Government’s behaviour over this decision? I will come to the decision in a second, but I want to address how the Government dealt with the decision—and how they have publicly dealt with it, which is really rather peculiar. It has been almost impossible throughout this to drag information out of the Government about why the DNSA took the decisions he took, where the Government were in this and when meetings took place. Denials slid towards acceptances that dates were in fact as they stood. As I understand it, it was even exclaimed by the Prime Minister that The Sunday Times was lying when it raised the idea of there being a meeting on 1 September containing all the various individuals, including the DNSA. It has been a sort of meticulous nonsense. Dodge, duck, dive, dip, and dodge—the five Ds of dodgeball, or in this case the five Ds of dodge the spying case. Getting to the truth of this has been painful, and if it is painful for the Government, they have only themselves to blame. Had they come out straightaway at the beginning and been clear about all this, instead of hiding behind the DNSA, they might have found it easier. I find ridiculous the position that the DNSA stated yesterday—that he was bound to reflect the position of the Government. The DNSA is not bound to reflect the position of the Government. He was asked by the DPP—and therefore bound to respond to the DPP—whether or not he said that China was an active security threat. What I do not understand is how the then DNSA, both at the time and again when giving evidence yesterday, was able to say that China posed a range of threats—just as the Minister said—on different areas all across the board, from sanctions right the way through to espionage. I do not understand the difference between posing a series of significant threats to our national security in different areas across the board and being a threat to our national security. It is impossible to even conceive that we could define this so narrowly that we are unable to come out with the very simple statement: “They pose a threat to our national security.” From my standpoint, I face a threat. I have been chased and regularly followed by wolf warriors, which are low-level intelligence operatives of China. They have impersonated me abroad and spread lies about what I have said, and those of us who have been sanctioned have been spied on. I know what a threat looks like. It looks like that. It is not a duck; it is a threat. There is no reason why any self-respecting Government could not have said that. The DNSA should have said that straight off—not go out and tell us that the police asked him to introduce what had been in the manifesto of the Labour party in the last election and then say that he knew nothing at all about it previously but had to put this in context. He was not asked to put it in context. The DSNA was asked to state clearly, from what he sees and the evidence he has taken, whether China poses an active security threat. At the nub of this is another particularly important point. The 1 September meeting is critical in all this, because we have been given assurances throughout this—by the Prime Minister, for example, at Prime Minister’s questions on 15 October. He said: “There was no further submission of evidence, one way or the other, after any discussion in September.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 368.] Yet we know that now not to be the case. Why was the Prime Minister making such a fundamental statement at Prime Minister’s questions trying to shut this down? Did nobody bother to tell him that this had gone to a meeting? By the way, we were told that at no stage was the National Security Adviser or any other appointed individual at any meetings with or in contact with the DNSA throughout the submission of evidence. That is utterly untrue. We know that the DNSA was at the meeting chaired by the National Security Adviser on 1 September. What did they discuss? Was it football scores or what was right in front of them there and then: the still-unfinished business of whether or not the DNSA was going to comply with the DPP’s requirement for a very clear statement? It is that bit of subterfuge, with dipping and dodging throughout, that is really quite peculiar. I have respect for the Minister. When he gets to his feet, can we not have this ridiculous game of “You did this” and “You said that”? I would simply like him to recognise that China poses a national security threat. Let us deal with that threat and take clear action, and not play games with terminological inexactitudes about what happened at what meeting. We now know that the DNSA met all those characters —we do not know who they are—so the minutes of the meeting should be released. If the Government will not release them to Parliament, they can do it in camera to the Intelligence and Security Committee. They should do it to clear the record; I recommend that they do. People like me, the Chairman of Ways and Means and others have suffered attacks from this brutal regime, which has massacred people in China and committed genocide. Surely now is the time to make our position clear.
I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend’s excellent speech. Did he see, in the testimony yesterday, the intervention in which Sir Chris Wormald suddenly said that he did not believe that Ken McCallum, the chief of MI5, had described China as a threat? He intervened on the DNSA to make that point. That is fundamentally untrue, is it not?
I was not going to intervene, but the hon. Gentleman made a statement about me justifying the position of the Opposition, as opposed to the Government. I assure him that had the two sides been switched, I would be carrying out exactly the same cross-examination that I have done today. No matter who has been in government, I seem to have been in opposition, and I want to say so. I am not doing this for any betterment; I am doing this because it is right.
rose—
Will the Minister give way?
I have a very simple question: if the Minister will not give the minutes of that meeting to the House, will he give them to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which sits in camera?
This has been an interesting experience, almost revisiting ancient times with the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) leading for the Government on this debate. While I have a great deal of sympathy with his position, I cannot sympathise with his rather bland, anodyne account of the events to date. What is clear, and it is an apophthegm often imbibed with one’s mother’s milk, is that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, it is almost certainly a duck. The problem in this case is that the Government were never prepared to describe that animal as a duck. They must have known from a very early period; indeed, the first senior Treasury counsel said yesterday that, even in August, he had made the point abundantly plain to the Government that unless they reconsidered their approach and described the blasted animal as a duck, the case would go down the pan. There was nothing to prevent the Government, through their expert witness, from saying, “In our view, China was a national security threat in 2021”—nothing at all to prevent that.
No, I will not—too short of time. There was nothing to prevent that because it was a question of fact. The fact is that the Government were not prepared to change their approach. It is a perfectly legitimate point for the right hon. Member for Torfaen to say to me, “Back in 2021, the policy of the Government was not to describe China as an enemy,” but at that time, we had not had the spying, the intimidation, and the direct targeting of this institution and the democratic assembly of our people that we have now seen by 2025. Things have moved on, and it was incumbent upon the Government to reconsider their approach, which was that they would not describe a duck as a duck. The witness was prepared to say, “It has webbed feet, it swims, it quacks, it has a bill—but we are not prepared to call it a duck.” Are you telling me, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the right hon. Gentleman can look this House in the eye and say that nobody raised this problem inside No. 10 and said, “We have a policy problem. It is a roadblock to this case. What are we going to do about it?”? Is he saying that that was never discussed with the National Security Adviser, that the DNSA never raised that with any relevant Minister? The Attorney General, when he met on 3 September, said, “Well, I couldn’t intervene on matters of sufficiency of evidence.” That is perfectly true; he cannot intervene, but he could challenge. He could say, “What do you need? Is there anything I can do by way of intercession with ministries to ensure that you get the evidence that you require?” But nothing was said. Nothing was said on 3 September because “nothing” was the policy of the Government. It was to wait while this case slid down the slope straight into the pan where no doubt many of the, not inaptly named, mandarins of Whitehall were perfectly content to see it slide. There is extraordinary cheek in the right hon. Gentleman, who came to this House four or five years ago with his Humble Address when he asked for legal advice—advice on the most sensitive negotiating matters that this country was engaged in with the Berlaymont—to be disclosed for all to see, now saying that we should not see the truth of what in reality the Government were saying and doing at the time. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it is almost certainly a duck, and when I apply it to what the right hon. Gentleman says, it is almost certainly a complete crock of old—
Duck.
Will the Minister give way on that point?
rose—
The Minister did say he would give way to me.
Will the Minister give way on the question of who was present?
Why was the Attorney General’s Office represented and present? If the meeting had nothing to do with the case, why was the Attorney General’s Office present through its representative?
The Attorney General’s Office has nothing to do with foreign policy.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this Government are not only taxing young people’s jobs but taxing their chances of owning a home through the increase in stamp duty and the rumoured increase on the capital gains on principal private residences?
The hon. Lady referred to the trade deals—so many more than were achieved under the Conservative Government, she says—but the reality is that those trade deals could not have been made had we not had the Brexit deal that we achieved when in government. What is more, the Labour party opposed that deal. We could not do those trade deals before 2016.
I am still smarting from my hon. Friend’s reluctance to squash the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), who alleged that there had been no leasehold reform. Such was the extent of leasehold reform under Conservative Governments that the Duke of Westminster resigned from the party in indignation.
If the hon. Gentleman had listened to the shadow Chancellor, he would have heard him say that half the £47 billion in savings will come from reducing welfare spend. Another significant proportion will come from reducing the civil service to the size it was back in 2016. The proposal is fully funded, and he does himself no favours by inventing other facts.
The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned covid, which is the largest single contributor to the increase in the size of the state. He also did not mention the £5 billion reduction in welfare spending proposed by the Government; the Conservative party supported that, but the Government just gave in on it. There is plenty of money to be saved.
Does my hon. Friend agree that cutting stamp duty will not only benefit young people aspiring to home ownership, but act as an incentive for older people to downsize, freeing up larger family homes and making them available for families that need to increase the size of the house they own?
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that in the south-west of England, the Government have reduced the building target for Bristol city council, which has a lot of Labour members, and have instead increased the building target for rural Somerset, where there are few Labour members, by 40%? Does she share my concern that Labour is fiddling the housing targets for political advantage?
Is my hon. Friend aware that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), used to be part of the Resolution Foundation—that well-known right-wing think tank—which itself has called for the abolition of stamp duty to free up the housing market in the way my hon. Friend is describing?
All of us here want to improve the lives of our constituents, though we often differ in how we might achieve that. As a Conservative, I believe we do so by working with the grain of human nature, by allowing people the maximum amount of liberty to live their lives, by supporting families, by rewarding hard work, rather than penalising it, and by incentivising entrepreneurship and the creation of wealth. As legislators, we do that by keeping the size of the state under control, keeping borrowing low and reducing the burden on taxpayers wherever possible. It is with regret that I see this current Labour Government increasing taxes, increasing borrowing, increasing the deficit and our national debt, and increasing the interest we pay on that debt. It saddens me that we have a Government whose answer, whatever the question, always seems to be more public expenditure. I am pleased therefore that not only will the Conservative party reduce taxes when we form the next Government, but will scrap one altogether. Stamp duty is a bad tax. The current stamp duty regime means that anyone seeking to buy their first home or to move house faces an additional burden at one of the most important moments in their lives. By eliminating this tax on main homes, the Conservatives would be removing a financial barrier, which for many first-time buyers or young families makes the difference between owning their first home or not. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) alluded to that in his excellent speech. It would mean the dream of home ownership was made more accessible. While stamp duty has been around since 1694, the current regime was introduced by Gordon Brown in 2003. When it came into effect, it charged a fixed percentage rate depending on the value of a house—the so-called slab system. It meant that when the price went from £250,000 to £250,001, people faced an enormous increase in the tax paid. The coalition Government, to their credit, reformed the tax so as to remove the tax from those purchasing a property for under £125,000. They eliminated the slabs in the model with a slice model. That made the tax better, but the core problems remain. Stamp duty makes it harder to purchase a house. It dissuades people from upsizing or downsizing, and therefore prevents a host of other economic activities associated with moving house. A vibrant housing market is vital to economic health. When more people buy and move, transactions increase, new homes are built, tradespeople are employed, and local economies benefit. The tax on each move discourages those transactions. People stay put because of the cost of moving, and that can lead to the housing market locking up. Scrapping stamp duty on primary homes will free up the market. That will have benefits not just for buyers and sellers, but for builders, developers, local services, and the whole national economy. There is a fairness argument, too. Buying a home is one of the largest investments that most people will ever make, and to tax that moment seems not just counterintuitive but perverse. Removing the tax on a main residence signals a commitment to giving people a chance to grow, to aspire and to build their lives. Those are Conservative principles, and the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in Manchester recognised that. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that this change will create “a fairer and more aspirational society.”
My hon. Friend has made a valuable point. This tax cut benefits not just the first-time buyer, but the family moving into a larger home and the empty nesters—I am almost one—seeking to move into a smaller house.
That is another valuable point. This tax cut benefits not just the housing market but the jobs market, and therefore the whole economy. Our politics ought to empower people, not load them with additional burdens. This is an important measure for young people, because, as we acknowledge, they face higher costs and more competition for housing than their parents did. To be credible, we must explain how we will pay for this measure. That is a valid question, and, unlike some parties in this place, we will not make promises without a plan for delivery. The measure is possible as part of a wider package of economic reform, spending discipline and growth creation. The Government were elected on a policy of “going for growth”, yet everything that they do seems designed to bring about the opposite. A jobs tax makes it more expensive to employ people; higher business rates make it more expensive to conduct business in a property; the changes in agricultural and business property relief—increasing inheritance tax—reduce investment by family businesses; and the Employment Rights Bill makes it more expensive, time-consuming and difficult to employ people. The Government have turned on the spending taps and levied record levels of tax, while at the same time implementing measures that increase unemployment and make Britain less competitive. Every Labour Government has led to higher unemployment, and it is deeply regrettable that in every month since the general election, unemployment has risen. I do not think that the Government are malevolent; they simply have no clue about how business works.
Well, I am amazed to hear that the real economy is growing by 10%. That must be a forecaster I have not heard of! We believe it is possible to cut welfare spending. In fact, a few months ago, the hon. Gentleman’s party believed it was possible. The Government put forward a modest proposal to reduce welfare spending by £5 billion, which had our support, yet, unfortunately, at the first whiff of rebellion, the Chancellor caved. That shows that the Government have no idea how finance works, how business works or how confidence works. They undermined their credibility by being unable to undertake even the smallest reform. We can announce the abolition of stamp duty because we have promised to put Britain on a different track. Our golden rule means that, for every pound we make in savings, half will go on reducing the deficit and paying down our debts. We will reduce spending by £47 billion a year, and have announced plans to do so. About half of that will come from cutting the welfare bill, including stopping the ballooning bill for Motability cars for those with mild mental health issues. Some £8 billion of savings will come from reducing the civil service to the size it was before the pandemic. We will save money by closing asylum hotels, reserving other benefits to UK nationals, and coming to a more credible position on net zero. By taking those tough choices, we can cut taxes and help the economy. We estimate that abolishing stamp duty will cost £9 billion, which is set against the savings we have outlined. By pledging to remove it, we are signalling that we believe in growth, in enterprise and in enabling every citizen to build their future.
The news overnight from El Fasher in Darfur is truly dreadful, with evidence of summary executions and undoubted ethnic cleansing. Given the pivotal role that Britain plays, as set out by the former Minister for Development, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), will the Foreign Secretary urgently review everything that we are doing, in order to prevent El Fasher from becoming another Srebrenica?
They say an Englishman’s home is his castle—the place he feels safe and has control of, a place with a sense of permanence. In today’s world, though, we have younger people stuck at the gatehouse, renting, unable to break through into property ownership; and we have older generations locked inside the castle towers, unable to downsize easily and get out, and last winter being cold with the sudden changes in the winter fuel allowance. They are also facing a Government armed with a trebuchet, flinging economic misery at the castle walls, destroying prospects and the foundations. There is a reason why people like programmes such as “Escape to the Country” and “Homes Under the Hammer”—other daytime programmes are available. They are really popular because they embody the aspiration of the British public to earn, and to purchase and make a true home. The policy in the motion does so much to unlock the potential that we have. Abolishing stamp duty on a primary residence could save young families, especially in London, up to £18,000 on their first home. I am really disappointed to hear Labour Members, particularly the hon. Member for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder), say they do not believe it is fair to do that. It feels like the politics of envy: given that house prices are so much higher in London and the south-east, this policy is only fair. If that is combined with our announcement of the first jobs bonus, where the first £5,000 of national insurance paid by any British citizen starting their first job will be placed in a personal savings account earmarked for a first home deposit or future savings, it would be transformational. Stamp duty is, as has been echoed across the Chamber, a terrible tax. I am sure certain Labour Members will tend to agree. It is an additional tax that distorts the market and often stops people moving. We all agree it is complicated—its calculation, the exemptions. I was a commercial property lawyer, and I actually had to complete stamp duty forms. They are an absolute nightmare; they slow down and stifle the market. Particularly for young couples and families who find that dream home that they want to move into, the stamp duty alone is enough to stop them. That should not be happening in this day and age. We need to unlock true aspiration and opportunity, and I fail to see why Labour Members would reject such a policy, which has been welcomed by so many, including their own constituents.