Labour plans holiday home tax raid and the return of rates

JEREMY CORBYN is planning a tax raid on the owners of second homes.

Labour’s leader is to announce a levy targeting holiday homes during the party’s conference in Liverpool.

The tax would be based on the value of each property and “equivalent to double the current rate of council tax”, a Labour spokesman said.

The announcement will intensify the fears of higher earners already bearing the brunt of his economic plans, amid heightened talk in Westminster of a general election if Theresa May fails to secure a Brexit deal that can be approved by Parliament.

Dawn Butler, the shadow women and equalities secretary, drew controversy yesterday on the eve of the Labour conference when she appeared to praise the hard-Left Militant group for stating in the Eighties that it was “better to break the law than break the poor”. One Labour MP said: “This shows how much the Labour Party has changed under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Here we have a member of the shadow cabinet endorsing the Militant tendency … and backing public officials who break the law.” Separately, Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader, said last night that Mr Corbyn must be ready to throw his support behind another referendum on Brexit.

John Healey, the shadow housing secretary, said the proceeds of the tax on holiday homes would go to councils to help families with children living in temporary accommodation. He said the changes would address the rising number of children “growing up in hostels and B&Bs” and help to build “a housing market that works for the many”.

Labour believe it could be levied on 174,000 properties in rural areas such as Cornwall, North Norfolk and South Lakeland, and raise £560million a year.

Meanwhile, Labour councillors from 36 councils in a coalition led by Paul Dennett, the Labour mayor of Salford, have endorsed plans to replace council tax with domestic rates – the system that existed in England until 1990. Conservative sources claimed it could cause bills to rise by £470 a year on a typical Band D home, based on a similar system in Northern Ireland.

James Brokenshire, the Communities Secretary, said: “Bringing rates back from the dead would be a tax raid on middle England, hitting those who have saved and worked hard to improve their homes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has gone back to the 1970s – from a return of the militant Left to bringing back punishing rates of taxation on family homes.”

A Labour spokesman said the rates proposal was “not Labour policy”.