Stamp duty should be scrapped – and the whole property system reformed
With a big majority and Brexit secured, the Government has no excuses for being timid
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is under pressure to extend the stamp duty holiday
In 1909, Winston Churchill – then a Liberal serving in Herbert Asquith’s Cabinet – had this to say on the subject of property and land: Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own