Tories ‘must boast about tax cuts’

THE Conservatives need to be “prouder and louder” in boasting of their tax cuts for millions of people, Amber Rudd said last night.

The Home Secretary said the Tories had “to make the case again” for voting Conservative because of the way Labour had “corrupted” the party’s ideas. Ms Rudd, speaking at a reception thrown by the Centre for Policy Studies, singled out corporation tax cuts and increasing the threshold at which income tax is paid as the party’s major achievements.

Yesterday, the chairman of the influential Treasury select committee urged Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, to overhaul stamp duty in the Budget to help young people to get on the property ladder.

Nicky Morgan MP, a former Tory Cabinet minister, also called for new measures to encourage developers to build more bungalows for pensioners to move into and free up larger homes.

Ms Rudd told an audience that including 50 Tory MPS elected for the first time in the 2015 and 2017 elections: “We need to make that case again – to go out and have that fight because right behind us is Labour, who are going to try to corrupt and make sure other people don’t understand the things that we stand for.

“We stand for free enterprise and aspiration, for law and order and for the basic ingredients that make us a safe and prosperous nation.

“All of you here – you are going to be crucial in making that happen.” Ms Rudd praised the CPS for making “the intellectual case” for cutting taxes.

She said: “Our corporation tax cuts have seen record levels of employment following the deepest recession since the Second World War.

“Theresa May has been clear that we need to do more – particularly on housing we need to have a system to boost more ownership and make sure that everybody has a stake in the market economy.”

Speaking to the Resolution Foundation think-tank, Ms Morgan said she supported reform of stamp duty to encourage home owners to downsize. She said: “We have got to go back to building housing stock that people are going to move into in later life.”

The Taxpayers’ Alliance says that for older people in bigger homes, “it is not worth moving” because of the stranglehold stamp duty on the market.

John O’connell, the chief executive, said: “Hefty tax bills on property purchases not only discourage older households from downsizing, they also stop people moving around the country to take up better-paid jobs and are a major contributor to the poor productivity growth in recent years.”