Badenoch vows to abolish stamp duty as she closes Tory conference

Kemi Badenoch promised to abolish stamp duty if the Conservatives win the next election as she closed the party conference.

Having focused on borders in her opening address, Mrs Badenoch used her leader’s speech on Wednesday to set out her vision of a country where the state “does less but does it better” and “profit is not a dirty word”.

She pledged to impose a “golden rule” on her budget plans, spending only half of any savings made through spending cuts, with the rest going to reduce the deficit.

And she said she would cut student numbers, saving £3 billion that would then be spent on doubling the apprenticeship budget.

But in the final passages of her speech, she went further, committing to free up the housing market by abolishing stamp duty on people’s primary homes.

She said: “Stamp duty is a bad tax.

“We must free up our housing market, because a society where no one can afford to buy or move is a society where social mobility is dead.”

Stamp duty land tax brought in an estimated £13.9 billion in the last financial year, but a large proportion of this is from additional homes and other buildings.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated that abolishing stamp duty on primary residences will cost around £4.5 billion.

But, claiming that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves was planning a significant increase in stamp duty, the Conservatives said they had “cautiously” estimated that the policy would cost £9 billion.

Mrs Badenoch insisted she could meet this promise while sticking to her new “golden rule”, saying this was the “fiscally prudent” thing to do.

Her address brought to a close a conference that had been overshadowed by questions about her leadership and the threat from Reform UK.

The day before her speech, Nigel Farage’s party announced 20 councillors had defected from the Tories, while a poll published by More in Common on Wednesday showed the Conservatives continue to languish in third place.

But the major defection that some in the party feared would take place on Wednesday morning did not come, while Mrs Badenoch attacked her opponents, vowing to reverse Labour policies and accusing Sir Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Ed Davey of “shaking the same magic money tree”.

Although she dismissed Reform as promising “free beer tomorrow”, Mrs Badenoch reserved most of her attacks for Labour, pledging to reverse a swathe of policies introduced by the new Government.

These included abolishing VAT on private schools, reversing changes to inheritance tax for farms and scrapping the carbon tax.

Along with other spending promises made during the conference, the Conservatives estimated that these would cost a total of £21.1 billion, compared with £47 billion of savings shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said he had identified in his own conference speech on Monday.

In an apparent response to reports that attendance at this year’s conference had declined, leaving swathes of the exhibition hall in Manchester empty, she said the Conservatives were “fizzing with ideas”.

And insisting that the Tories were the only ones who could “meet the test of our generation”, she thanked members for “standing by” the party.

Earlier, Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake had told the PA news agency he expected the announcements from the party conference would “move the needle in terms of the polls”.

He said: “I think those messages have been very well received this week by our members, very optimistic view of where we are today from our members and indeed the future.

“So yeah, we expect things to improve in terms of our political fortunes.”

Following the speech, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged “one nation” Conservatives to join his party, accusing Mrs Badenoch of deciding to “abandon the traditional British values of tolerance, decency and the rule of law” over plans to leave the ECHR.

And Green Party leader Zack Polanski said Mrs Badenoch had been “speaking to the room, not listening to the nation”.

He said: “While she got rounds of applause from men in suits sitting in front of her, she still sounds painfully out of touch with those dressed and ready to work for this country.”

Labour Party chairwoman Anna Turley said Mrs Badenoch had been in “complete denial”, adding: “The public saw the Tories’ disastrous blueprint for Britain across their 14 years of failure in government – and the Conservatives still won’t apologise for the mess they left.”