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Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has vowed the Tories would abolish stamp duty if her party won the next election.
In her leader’s speech at Conservative party conference, she described stamp duty as a ‘bad tax’.
She added: ‘As the Conservative party, we know who our people are. They are people who work hard, they are the people who plauy hard, they are the people who understand the importance of putting down roots.
‘They are the people who make sacrifices today for a better life.
‘They are also people who want to own their own home, she says.
‘But there is a barrier – the tax you have to pay – stamp duty, she says.
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‘Stamp duty is a bad tax, she says, an un-conservative 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.’
The policy is one of many announcements unveiled Mrs Badenoch during her speech on the final day of the conference in Manchester.
They included scrapping Labour’s tax rises on school fees, farms and family businesses.
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.
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