Griffith Pledges to Scrap the Family Homes Tax and Back Heathrow
The shadow chancellor told the Conservative conference he will abolish Labour’s High Value Council Tax Surcharge, under which English homes worth more than £2 million pay an extra levy from 2028. “They pretend it’s a mansion tax, but it will hit people here in Birmingham, in Manchester,” Andrew Griffith said. He later committed a Conservative government to the Heathrow third runway. No costing has been published for either.
“Like Nigel Lawson, it’s my ambition to scrap at least one tax every budget,” Mr Griffith said, adding the plastic packaging tax to the list and conceding most people have never heard of it. He was careful on sequencing — “we will cut taxes, but only when we can afford to do so” — and said earlier in the day that he and Kemi Badenoch ultimately want to remove inheritance tax but must find the money first, which is a more guarded position than the weekend headlines suggested. He also blamed his own side for losing the argument: in government, he said, the party “allowed restrictions on everything from the type of car you could buy, how you could heat your home, to banning adverts for certain types of yogurt”. On aviation he promised to “do whatever it takes to end the delays” and legislate to “sweep away the blockers”, which immediately exposed a split: Sir James Cleverly said he had “always been very sceptical” of quick-fix arguments for a third runway, and Andrew Boff, who chairs the London Assembly, called it “the most unambitious scheme”. Andy Burnham has still not said whether he backs it, amid reports the project could slip by up to four years. Meanwhile the party’s claim that deregulation would cut £50,000 from the cost of a new home has been fact-checked as the housebuilding industry’s own estimate. Watch Mrs Badenoch’s own speech later this week.