Badenoch ready for a scrap to free up housing market

Kemi Badenoch has vowed to abolish stamp duty if the Conservatives win the next election, as she unveiled a raft of tax cuts in a bid to claw back voters and boost the party's ratings.

- MILLIE COOKE

Outlining the major policy announcement to a packed audience at her Tory conference speech in Manchester yesterday, she said the move to scrap the "bad tax" would "help achieve the dream of home ownership for millions".

The plans, which the Tories say would cost around £9bn, have been praised by economists, but questions remain over how the party would pay for them.

After a lacklustre party conference, Ms Badenoch also used her speech to take aim at Labour, pledging to overturn a series of policies brought in or bolstered by Sir Keir Starmer's government, including:

• abolishing the controversial VAT on private school fees

• reversing changes to inheritance tax for farms, dubbed the tractor tax

• a promise to undo Angela Rayner's workers' rights reforms

• banning doctors from going on strike, which she linked to higher waiting lists .

• scrapping the carbon tax

Having focused on securing the UK's borders by withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights in her opening address, Ms Badenoch then 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.

Committing to freeing up the housing market by abolishing stamp duty on people's primary homes, Ms Badenoch said: "Stamp duty is a bad tax ... a society where no one can afford to buy or move is a society where social mobility is dead."