Red Wall Tories join cross-party call for fairer property tax

THREE Redwall Tory MPS have joined calls demanding council tax is scrapped and replaced with a fairer system.

It comes as polling suggests the issue could tip the balance at the next election.

A survey of 4,000 people conducted by JL Partners for the Fairer Share campaign group has revealed widespread support for replacing council tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax (PPT), which would be levied on the current value of properties rather than on 1991 levels.

According to the findings, if Labour were to take this policy to voters in the next election all but one of the Redwall seats in the North that were won by the Conservatives in 2019 would be lost.

The PPT would see a tax cut for the majority of households leaving them with a bill of £556.

But it would mean that in thetory heartlands of the South, local taxation would rise significantly.

Fairer Share argues that a PPT introduced at a flat rate of 0.48 per cent on the value of a property would raise a surplus of £5.6billion for the Treasury and is a way for the Government to overhaul a deeply regressive and unfair system.

The proposal has won cross-party support, including from Redwall Conservatives John Stevenson, Aaron Bell and Simon Fell.

Carlisle MP Stevenson, deputy chairman of the influential Northern Research Group, said: “If the Conservative Party wants to deliver for voters and retain the Redwall seats that we won at the last general election, then making our property taxes fairer is one of the ways to do it.”