Conservative Party Conference 2025: Party proposes scrapping SDLT on primary residences

Badenoch pleases party with eye-catching policies

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch sent activists home from Manchester with a spring in their step and a fresh set of policies to sell to the electorate, but her own position, and her party’s, remains perilous.

The conference slogan of ‘Stronger Borders, Stronger Economy’ summed up the two main themes running through the gathering – issues of immigration and identity, and the challenge of growing the economy and helping people with the cost of living. The conference began with the emphasis on the first, with the announcement that a Conservative government would withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, but ended with the focus firmly on the latter, with a strong focus on what Americans call ‘pocketbook issues’ in Badenoch’s leader’s speech, including a headline proposal to scrap stamp duty land tax for primary residences (see below). In between came a slew of other announcements, including some on tax (again see below).

A key purpose of these policy announcements was to give party activists something to talk about beyond the party’s poor poll ratings, the threat of Reform UK (whose ratings are running at roughly double those of the Tories) and the metaphorical axe widely seen as hanging over Badenoch’s head. A pre-conference poll finding that half of Tory members think she should not lead the party into the next election did not help, and the announcement during the conference of the defection of 20 councillors to Reform added to the pressure, but Badenoch is widely seen to have improved her position (both among members and the public) and to have done enough to stave off any threat to her leadership at least until May’s local and devolved parliament elections.

The mood among party members at the conference was largely positive, or at least resilient. However this will partly be down to selection bias – members lacking confidence in the leadership, or belief that the party has a future at all, will have mostly stayed at home, or already left for Reform. The sparse attendance at many key speeches and fringe events told its own story. Attendance – both of members and external organisations – was significantly down, even from last year.

Economy seen as the key to Conservative revival

Polling suggests the Conservatives are more trusted (or perhaps less distrusted) than either Labour or Reform UK on economic issues. Party leaders are leaning into this as their best hope for staging a recovery.

Polling released by More in Common at the start of the conference explored possible routes back to recovery for the Conservatives and one issue stood out: the economy. “Britons are twice as likely to trust the Conservatives over Labour and Reform when it comes to handling the economy, reducing national debt and attracting investment to the UK,” concluded the analysis. “If the Conservatives can rebuild their image as a party of fiscal responsibility, it would help to restore trust in the party as voters have strong doubts about the viability of Reform’s spending plans. However, attacks on the economic credibility of Reform and Labour would only be effective if the Conservative Party had a clear, credible economic plan.”

Analysing the data, Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein, in a column for The Times, observed that: “Of all the economic issues, low tax seems the most politically fruitful area for the Conservatives”, though he warned that “voters are still split on whether they see them as a low-tax party.”

This message of fiscal responsibility and economic credibility was emphasised by Kemi Badenoch, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride and others throughout the conference. As Badenoch said in her speech on the conference’s opening day: “We may be in Manchester, but the theme of economic responsibility will run through this conference like the words in a stick of Blackpool rock.”

As part of the party’s efforts to transmit a message of fiscal responsibility, Stride has repeatedly sought to distance himself – and by extension the party – from the Liz Truss mini-budget, pointing to his (strident?) criticism of it as chair of the Treasury Committee at the time. “That was a mistake and I made it very clear that under a Conservative government under this leadership that will never, ever, ever happen again,” he told a fringe meeting. However he is hampered in this by the continued presence in senior roles of members of the Truss administration.

An economic plan – but is it credible?

At the heart of the Conservative economic prospectus is the claim that they alone would have the discipline to make substantial cuts to public spending, enabling them to both pay down debt and cut taxes, ending Labour’s “borrowing and tax doom loop” and delivering economic growth.

These cuts would include £23 billion a year from the welfare budget, where proposals include removing benefit entitlement from those who are UK-resident but not UK-citizens and from those with ‘less severe’ mental health conditions. The party also believes it can save £8 billion by reducing the civil service to its pre-Brexit size (though they have not specified which departments they will target) and £7 billion from overseas aid (cutting it by two thirds on top of Labour’s existing cuts). In total the Conservatives believe they have identified £47 billion a year in savings. Badenoch explained that, under a new “Golden Economic Rule”, at least half of the savings will go towards cutting the deficit, “[a]nd with the rest, we will get Britain growing and bring down the taxes stifling our economy”.

Is this plan credible? Views will differ, with sceptics pointing to the party’s record in power. A number of observers pointed to the Conservatives’ opposition to the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance and continuing support for the pensions ‘triple lock’ as evidence that they are not ready to make the tough choices needed to reduce the size of the state. Tom Clougherty, boss of the free market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, suggested that: “Ultimately, no political party is going to be able to balance the books only by cutting things their supporters don’t like.”

While the Conservatives’ attacks on Labour’s economic policy are well-rehearsed accusations of incompetence, an addiction to taxes and an unwillingness to keep public spending under control, the critique of Reform on the economy is still work in progress. Partly it is the claim that their sums don’t add up (“tens of billions in unfunded commitments” exclaimed Mel Stride in his conference speech) but increasingly there is also the claim that Reform is economically left-wing. “Nigel Farage is in the same boat as Labour, Lib Dems, the Greens, Plaid Cymru, SNP,” said Badenoch. “That is not our boat.” Stride was even more explicit: “Reform want to get back to the days of nationalisation and state control. They are marching to the left. Be in no doubt, they are the party of more spending and more debt.”

We’ll abolish stamp duty on your home, says Badenoch

The ‘rabbit out of the hat’ in the leader’s closing address to the conference was an announcement that the party would scrap stamp duty land tax (SDLT) on main homes.

During her speech, Kemi Badenoch said SDLT was “a bad tax” and “un-Conservative.” She praised the previous Conservative governments that had reduced the levy for thousands of homebuyers and announced that a future Conservative government would “abolish stamp duty on your home”.

Under the Conservative proposals, SDLT would be entirely abolished on primary residences, regardless of house value. However, the tax would remain in place for second or subsequent homes, properties bought by companies or by non-UK residents. As SDLT is devolved, it would be for the governments of Scotland and Wales to decide whether to implement similar changes. The Scottish and Welsh Conservatives have both said they would scrap their SDLT equivalents – Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and Land Transaction Tax respectively – if they win their respective elections next year (a big ‘if’ given current polling).

The Conservatives estimate the cost of abolishing SDLT on primary residences in 2029–30 at £9 billion; however, they have highlighted that the current cost is around £4.5 billion. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) suggests that these figures are broadly consistent with recent forecasts, which show that SDLT raised just over £10 billion in 2024–25, with approximately half of this revenue coming from additional dwellings.

Many organisations, including the IFS, believe that SDLT acts as a barrier to people moving house, trapping individuals in unsuitable accommodation and leading to an inefficient allocation of housing. The Telegraph, citing the TaxPayers’ Alliance, suggests that abolishing transaction taxes in the UK could increase GDP by £17 billion over ten years. On the other hand, the Guardian reports the Social Market Foundation’s observation that abolishing SDLT would “benefit London and wealthiest homeowners the most”.

While the announcement was presented as part of a carefully crafted programme there are suggestions it was a very late decision. Speaking on The News Agents, journalist Emily Maitlis said she had spoken to people ‘involved in the planning’, who had told her that “the stamp duty decision came very late” and she believed that the party had gone into the conference “knowing they wanted to cut a tax, but not knowing which it would be”. She understood it had been worked out between Kemi Badenoch and her Shadow Chancellor during the course of the conference.

An interesting follow-up question on this announcement is whether it makes action in this area by the Labour Government more or less likely in November’s Budget. As suggested here and here there are a range of significant property tax changes thought to be being looked at by the Treasury – some of which involve scrapping SDLT – and even if the more radical of these don’t come to pass, a cut (most likely a threshold increase) to SDLT must be a big possibility as a relatively cheap pro-growth tax cut. There is a school of thought that Badenoch’s announcement will put pressure on the government to announce a big cut to SDLT. However it is at least as likely that any government inclination to cut this tax will be stayed by a feeling that the main political dividend would be a win for the Conservatives who would be seen to be ‘setting the weather’.

Stride announces tax break for the young

In his conference speech Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride announced a new policy initiative called the “First Job Bonus”: “When someone takes their first job, the first £5,000 they pay in national insurance won’t go to the taxman, it will go towards a deposit on their first home, or it will go towards their savings for later life”.

Under this proposal, eligible individuals—restricted to British nationals—would see their national insurance redirected, rather than paid to the Exchequer. They would be able to access these savings after a five-year period, and for couples the combined benefit could amount to £10,000. The Conservatives estimate that the annual cost of the scheme would be around £2.8 billion.

One the face of it this represents a switch in priorities for a party that targeted retired people (along with workers generally) with a big tax cut at last year’s election, promising a higher income tax personal allowance for pensioners. Stride did not deny this when it was put to him on the fringe. He presented the proposal as a response to a wider “sense of disconnection from British society” among young people.

Responding to a question from CIOT he said he wanted “to send a really clear message to young people that this party is on your side. If you’re going to go out and do the right thing, work hard, etc. you have absolutely a right to share in the fruits of our economy and I want to telegraph that very strongly. And I want to make a link between getting taxes down and employment and output up which is exactly what that cut will do in terms of how it would work in incentive terms.”

There was some scepticism as to whether the policy would have the impact promised. Mortgage brokers expressed doubt that it would significantly influence behaviour, especially in London and the South East, where property deposits exceed the amounts provided by the bonus. Daniel Herring of the Centre for Policy Studies suggested at a fringe meeting that it was a “gimmick”: “It's going to add pages to the tax system and it's not really going to solve any of the big issues.”

However media reaction was more favourable, with The Sun, for example, saying the policy could spark the attention of young Brits. Additionally, in the light of the SDLT announcement two days later, it may be that the cumulative effect of the two policies would prove more significant.

Proposal to scrap business rates for most shops, pubs and leisure businesses

Everybody loves ‘the high street’ so Mel Stride’s promise that “a further Conservative government will completely abolish business rates for shops and pubs on our high streets” was well received both inside and outside the hall.

The Shadow Chancellor told his audience that small businesses are “the little platoons that together form a mighty army… Small businesses and our high streets are the unsung heroes, they employ, they create, they protect. They make us alive and whole.” But “for many businesses the burden of Labour’s tax rises is simply too much to bear… under Labour, many have seen their business rates double”.

Hence his announcement. Digging into the more detailed reporting of it it does not appear to be a ‘high street’ specific proposal. Rather, retail, hospitality and leisure firms in England would be exempted from business rates up to an annual threshold of £110,000 per year, with local councils reimbursed for the lost revenue. The party has suggested that only large supermarkets would remain liable for business rates. Presumably this is just within the retail sector, as the policy does not seem to affect the rates liabilities of offices, factories and warehouses, among others.

Answering a question from CIOT in the conference’s Politico Pub, Stride explained that “SMEs have had a really tough time. They need a bit of hope out there that the government’s going to get tax off its back and allow it to flourish.” He described the regenerative potential that he sees the proposal as having, helping tackle “the decay that can set in along high streets, the crime that can set in, that sense of pessimism that goes there.” “I think there is a social value to the high street and so I wanted to use a tax that both boosted small and medium sized enterprises that we should be there to support, but at the same time has the social function of strengthening communities in that way,” he elaborated.

At fringe events after the announcement, Conservative MPs such as Bradley Thomas and Alison Griffiths expressed their support for the move, Griffiths saying that businesses are “on their knees” as a result of high tax burdens. Business leaders also welcomed the Conservatives’ plan, with Helen Dickinson, chief executive at the British Retail Consortium, saying: “It is good to see the Shadow Chancellor recognise the challenge that the current business rates system poses to high streets across the country”. Rain Newton-Smith, CBI Chief Executive, said the plans “could give high streets a boost”.

Party reaffirms opposition to inheritance tax changes

A Conservative government would repeal Labour’s changes to agricultural property and business reliefs for inheritance tax (IHT) in its first budget, Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith told the conference. VAT on school fees would also go.

Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride joined Griffith in promising to reverse the changes, Badenoch promising: “we will scrap their tax on family farms… we will scrap their tax on family businesses”. Stride thundered that, under Labour, “nothing is safe from the taxman. Not your job, not your home, not your pension, not your farm, not your business, not even that which you simply wish to pass on to your own children. You name it, they’ll tax it. And we say enough is enough!”

Victoria Atkins, Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, declared a “food and farming emergency”, reeling off a list of ways that Labour is ‘letting down’ the sector, from the IHT changes to a ‘new tax’ on food producers (a reference to the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme, which came into effect this month), as well as many non-tax measures. She said she would be calling, before the Budget, “a food and farming emergency summit, where I shall bring farmers, food producers, and fishermen together to come up with the urgent solutions you need to address this emergency”.

Another shadow business minister, Harriett Baldwin, discussed the IHT changes on the fringe, saying she’d seen analysis that suggests that they will “end up costing the economy and costing the chancellor” because of the disincentive they send to people to invest in their businesses. John Glen, a member of the Treasury Committee, speaking at a CIOT/CenTax fringe meeting, said the changes would unfairly impact farmers and the rural economy in particular.

Andy Summers, director of CenTax, speaking at the same event, said that if you accept the principle that there should be an inheritance tax then in general it should be applied as equally as possible. However, he contended, “there is a good reason to treat agricultural and business property differently from other forms of wealth”, due to liquidity issues, to avoid having to break an otherwise profitable business. For this reason CenTax were proposing that the tax be focused on situations where the farm or business is only a minority of the estate (the “minimum share rule”).

Inheritance tax remains the one tax whose proposed abolition would have gained even louder cheers at the conference than the announcement on SDLT. A panel put together by the TaxPayers’ Alliance were united in their wish to see it scrapped.

The Conservatives would also reverse Labour’s placing of VAT on school fees, which Badenoch called “an unprecedented tax punishing parents who work hard to invest in their children’s future”. “We will cancel [Labour’s] vindictive tax on education,” she vowed.

IR35 review and new HMRC feedback mechanism promised

The Shadow Business Secretary’s speech additionally promised to improve HMRC service levels and look again at off-payroll working rules (IR35), as well as rolling back the Labour government’s employment rights legislation.

The speech was notable for one of the clearest repudiations of the previous Conservative government’s record. After a few sentences accusing “Labour and the other parties” of not understanding business, Andrew Griffith said that there had been “moments in office” when the Conservatives had lost their way: “More regulations, raising taxes, the state as nanny. Indulging the idea that government is the solution, when we know very often it is the problem.” But now, he declared, “the Conservative Party is under new management”.

One priority, he said, would be tackling ‘red tape’. “Take HMRC, an organisation which literally tried to turn its helplines off for six months of the year. We say ‘enough’. That is unacceptable. So, within weeks of entering government, we will that ensure every time a small business contacts HMRC, they are given the opportunity to rate their experience in the same way as companies seek customer feedback. No more hanging on the phone for an hour with no one held accountable. No one loves paying their taxes. But the taxman needs to respect those whose hard work and enterprise pays their salaries.”

He also committed to “doing better for the self-employed”, including “looking again at reforming IR35”. There was no further detail on this.

Griffith was far from the only MP arguing for a better deal for business. Katie Lam identified excessive taxation, combined with a lack of political appetite for risk, as a major hindrance to business growth. Mark Garnier said the UK is less supportive of entrepreneurs than the US.

Stride dispels rumours of support for wealth tax

The Shadow Chancellor was challenged about comments he made in 2021 that were interpreted as sympathetic to a wealth tax. He said he had never advocated a wealth tax, and that wealth taxes were “an extremely bad thing”.

The challenge, at a TaxPayers’ Alliance event, related to an interview Mel Stride had done with Times Radio following the publication of the Treasury Committee’s Tax after Coronavirus report, when he was chair of the committee. He reportedly said to the interviewer that some countries had introduced wealth taxes only to row back on them later, then adding: “I think what might be more promising in terms of effectively raising more tax might be a one-off wealth tax.”

Stride said this was not in any way an endorsement of a wealth tax. The point he was making was, he elaborated, one contained in the committee’s cross-party report, which was that, while in his view, wealth taxes are an extremely bad thing regardless, “countries that have tried this have found that the only way they ever get anything out of it is to go in straight away [and] have a one-off grab”; when such taxes are ongoing, “people just leave and move and the actual tax take tails away”. So “there is a distinction between a one-off raid and a longer term thing in terms of their sustainability,” he argued, “but they are both deeply bad things to do.”

Wealth taxes were also chewed over at the CIOT/CenTax fringe event. Current Treasury Committee member John Glen gave them short shrift, arguing that increasing tax burdens on wealth creators risks discouraging investment and employment. He also highlighted the challenges of valuing diverse assets and dealing with asset mobility. He saw it as unlikely to happen (a view shared by other panellists), as well as undesirable.

The government’s non-dom tax changes also came under sustained fire at the conference. At an Institute of Economic Affairs event, Mark Garnier, Shadow Treasury Minister, suggested that the changes to the non-dom tax regime announced by Jeremy Hunt may have been a mistake. He called for the party to treat wealthy individuals as job creators, not merely as a ‘cash-cow’. Stride was also asked whether the changes had been a mistake. He didn’t say so directly but replied that to have got into a situation where we have a “drain of wealth creators” is a worry. The inheritance tax aspect of the changes is a particular issue, he contended.

The idea that there is a particular ‘brain drain’ of non-doms going on was challenged by CenTax’s Arun Advani. Responding on the fringe to a claim from shadow business minister Harriett Baldwin that the IHT changes for non-doms had caused many of them to leave the UK, Advani said that while there were people leaving the UK, analysis showed that people UK born and domiciled were as likely to be leaving as non-doms, so it was probably not based primarily on non-dom reforms. He made a plea for a change to the rules discouraging non-doms from investing in the UK, asking: “Why as UK PLC do we want to encourage people to come here, wealthy people to come here and say come here, live here, but please invest in any country in the world except here?” At a separate event KPMG’s Tim Sarson suggested the Foreign Incomes and Gains (FIG) regime should apply for ten years rather than just four.

If I had to raise tax, I’d choose income tax, says Stride

A candid answer from the Shadow Chancellor to a question about tax dismayed some of his colleagues. But there was agreement on the need for a simpler tax system.

Responding to a question at a fringe meeting organised by the think tank Onward, Mel Stride said that, if tax rises were required, targeting income tax would be the least bad choice. He was asked what he would do if he were in Rachel Reeves’s position. He replied: “If I were in exactly her position and I had to deal with tax, and I was down that end of the spectrum where it [the black hole] was really big, I would probably go for income tax on the basis that VAT would be inflationary. We’ve got a sticky inflation problem here, which is keeping interest rates higher for longer than we should otherwise be facing… I would be very worried about that. I wouldn’t want to be in that position, but that would be the cleanest thing to do.”

Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith was reported to be ‘visibly indignant and dismayed’ when told what Stride had said by former minister Lord Frost, who himself said he was “a bit disappointed” by the remarks. The Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Richard Fuller, said he was against further tax rises, adding: “I always agree with Mel Stride, the Shadow Chancellor and my boss, but I don’t agree that we should increase income tax – so you can square that circle as best you wish. The answer to the long-term problems of the UK is not to tax people more. Tax rates are already too high.”

Questioned about his remarks at a later event Stride said that his remarks had to be contextualised.  “It was if we had a black hole,” he explained.

There was more unity on the need for simplification, with both Stride and Fuller saying at fringe meetings that the tax system was too complicated and distortions needed to be removed. Stride picked out the very high marginal rates which can result from the interaction of income tax with the benefit system as an example, as well as the high marginal rates for higher earners which result from, among other things, the removal of the personal allowance.

Shadow business minister Harriett Baldwin said the tax system was “littered with behavioural distortions”: “people who don't want to grow their businesses because it would take them over a certain threshold; people who don't want to take a promotion because it would take them into a bracket where they would experience an enormous marginal tax rate.” She also suggested that the tax system “focuses far too much on things you want to happen, things you want to incentivise, and doesn't tax sufficiently some of the harmful things”.

Think tankers and commentators agreed on the need for simplification, and put forward suggestions. Ryan Shorthouse of Bright Blue criticised VAT and national insurance exemptions. Participants at a roundtable event organised by Re:State emphasised the need for a simpler, more transparent tax system that reduces distortions and compliance burdens. Mark Wallace of Total Politics called for employee national insurance to be rolled into income tax. “NI is just income tax in a comedy moustache,” he quipped. Speakers at a Taxpayers’ Alliance event advocated the campaign group’s proposal for a ‘Single Income Tax’ – the replacement of a complex swathe of direct taxes with a single tax on all income charged at a single rate of 30 per cent.

Could such a proposal be ‘a blueprint for the next Conservative government’, speculated the title of that event. There is no sign of it in the party’s current fiscal plans. However the party leader seems not to be averse to the idea. Speaking at an event organised to oppose the government’s inheritance tax changes last December, Kemi Badenoch said a flat tax rate was “very attractive” though there was “a lot of work” needed to make it a viable proposition, and “we cannot afford flat taxes where we are now”.

Tories would “axe the carbon tax”

Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho told the conference that a Conservative government would abolish Carbon Price Support, end the energy profits levy and repeal the Climate Change Act. The party claims their policies would cut £165 a year from the average family’s electricity bill.

Introduced in 2013 by the coalition government, Carbon Price Support is a tax levied on electricity generators using fossil fuels, designed to encourage cleaner energy production by making carbon-intensive generation more expensive. Academic research has concluded that it was the key factor in the proportion of electricity generated from coal falling from 40% to 3% over six years. It is currently charged at £18 per tonne of CO₂ emitted.

Coutinho said that eliminating this ‘carbon tax’ and wind farm subsidies would reduce energy bills by 20%. Kemi Badenoch, dubbing herself a ‘Net Zero sceptic’ in her speech, said her party’s ‘Cheap Power Plan’ would cut bills by £165 for the average family, by nearly £5,000 for the average restaurant and by over £1,100 for the average pub.

Badenoch and Coutinho also repeated the party’s commitment to end the energy profits levy in their speeches, as well as scrapping what Coutinho called “Ed’s mad ban on new oil and gas licenses”. “When it comes to the North Sea,” Badenoch said, “we have a very simple policy, drill our oil and gas now.”

At a subsequent fringe event, Coutinho argued that Reform UK's proposal to scrap net zero, which the party claims could save families £1,000 a year, is “nonsense” and compared it to Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election pledge of free broadband.

News in Brief

Would the Conservative Party roll back devolved powers such as those on tax? Remarks by members of the shadow cabinet at a session on the main conference stage suggest that this is a possibility. Alex Burghart, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, said that in the quarter of a century since devolution began, “none of the things that the people of Wales and Scotland were promised would happen have happened”. He continued: “Where that conversation takes us is a very interesting direction, but we have to be the party that’s prepared to stand up and say what’s actually in the minds of people in Wales and Scotland, that this system isn’t working as it was promised in 1998.” Mims Davies, the Shadow Welsh Secretary, also said devolution had failed, adding: “what we need to do is roll back the frontiers of those devolved areas.” Andrew Bowie, Shadow Scottish Secretary, said the people of Scotland had been let down because every devolved government has had a “socialist blob mindset”.

The Spectator held a discussion on whether ‘industry taxes’ hurt economic growth. Jack Rankin, an MP whose constituency (Windsor) hosts prestigious horse racing events, criticised proposed increases to gambling taxation. A speaker from drinks maker Pernod Ricard suggested that the OBR consistently underestimates alcohol duty receipts. He asked the government to listen to and collaborate with businesses, and to consider the broader consequences and overall costs to business when making tax changes.

At a fringe meeting organised by the think tank Re:State on what a Conservative strategy for economic growth looks like, CIOT asked the panel if there were any revenue-neutral pro-growth tax switches they would support. Shadow Financial Secretary Gareth Davies praised CIOT’s work around the Finance Bill and picked out a couple of pro-growth tax cuts (NI, introduction of full expensing) but did not offer any compensatory tax rises. Tim Sarson of KPMG offered an array of potential changes (scrapping ‘both stamp duties’, expanding the patent box, replacing council tax and business rates with a land value tax), saying he would raise income tax and VAT if necessary to pay for them.

At the same event the Shadow Financial Secretary praised the policy of investment zones which he said were not being talked about enough. He said their success could be seen and that was why Labour had carried on with them.

A questioner at a fringe meeting who runs a microbusiness, asked for a minister for microbusinesses. Mel Stride said he could not commit to this but agreed that “microbusinesses  matter”. He also acknowledged the questioner’s concerns about bunching at the VAT threshold. 

During an Institute of Economic Affairs fringe event, Shadow Treasury minister Mark Garnier criticised the lack of private sector experience among Labour’s cabinet members, suggesting this leads to a poor understanding of business realities. On tax system reform, he supported a shift towards more efficient, liquid forms of taxation and away from fragmented, ‘fractional’ taxes. He also expressed concern about a lack of understanding of economic and financial issues, particularly among young people.