Capital gains tax must be adapted, says Labour MP

A Labour MP has said capital gains tax needs to be adapted to stop people using housing stock as an investment rather then a home.

Dr Simon Opher, the new MP for Stroud, was speaking to Cam based constituent Catherine Morgan, a contributor to the BBC’s Your Voice Your Vote campaign.

A small business owner and mother of two children, Ms Morgan is looking to buy a property but has found it difficult. She wants to see more affordable homes and social housing built.

Labour is proposing an annual increase of 715 new homes every year in Stroud, but the district council’s Green Party leadership described the proposals as “undeliverable”.

From April 2023 to March 2024, 446 homes were built in Stroud, with 156 being classed as “affordable”.

But as of September 2024, 3,164 households are on the social housing register.

“It’s that security that we’re all really lacking at the moment,” Ms Morgan said, adding “the future looks quite bleak” when it comes to the aspiration of home ownership.

The new government’s aspiration is to build 1.5 million homes before the next election – if successful it would be the biggest house-building project in modern history.

Labour has also released proposed new housing targets for each local council across the country, with Stroud’s annual target the increase of 715 new homes.

Opher disagrees with the local green backlash against the target, arguing “we do need to build more houses”.

“We seem to have got to a stage where there isn’t enough housing locally,” he said.

“One of the problems with housing developers is they like to do the big five-bedroom houses, they’re not so keen on the smaller places, which is what we need at the moment, particularly around in Stroud actually.”

Ms Morgan quizzed the MP on ways to change the housing market to stop businesses buying up housing stock.

“We need to adapt capital gains tax actually, because at the moment capital gains tax is quite low compared to income tax,” he said.

“I don’t know what’s going to be in the budget but there are rumours that there is going to be increases to capital gains tax, particularly on second properties.”

The Labour MP admitted tough choices had had to be made in the first 100 days of the new government due to the financial state of the coffers.

Labour MPs have voted to scrap winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners and caused backlash among the public and within their own party.

“What the Labour government are trying to do is promote growth, and that involves some hard choices really and that has been quite tough,” he added.

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