Live: Kemi Badenoch pledges to abolish stamp duty on all home sales in Tory conference speech – UK Times

Our political editor David Maddox says:

Home ownership is the most Conservative of dreams so Kemi Badenoch’s announcement to abolish stamp duty is exactly what was needed to unite her party behind her.

She needed something big and this has been a speech laden with new policies but getting rid of one of the most hated taxes will be a challenge to Labour and also Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

We were told we would need to wait two years for policies but Ms Badenoch in the end under pressure has delivered in less than a year.

Kemi Badenoch has pledged to axe stamp duty if she is elected as the country’s next leader.

“We must free up our housing market because a society where no one can afford to buy or move is a society where social mobility is dead”, Ms Badenoch says.

Stating that home ownership should be a “dream for everyone”, she said: “At the heart of a Conservative Britain is a country where people who wish to own their first home, can. But our housing market is not working as it should.”

The money for this policy will be found from the cuts previously announced in her speech

Motability cars are “not for people with ADHD”, Kemi Badenoch said as she told her party’s conference the Tories would restrict eligibility for them.

“We will restrict motability vehicles to people with serious disabilities. Those cars are not for people with ADHD,” she said.

She also criticised time “wasted” by police on non-crime hate incidents.

“Conference, we are going to free the police to protect the public, not to chase political correctness,” she said.

Kemi Badenoch has outlined £47bn of cuts an incoming Tory government would make.

The Tory leader pointed to her top team and the measures each of her shadow cabinet colleagues will make to save cash.

She said: “Priti (Patel) has earmarked £7bn from the overseas aid budget.

“Alex (Burghart) has identified £8bn of cuts to the civil service. And Helen (Whately) has found £23bn from welfare.”

She promised that under a new “golden economic rule” half of the savings would go towards paying down Britain’s deficit, while the other half will be used to cut taxes.

Our political editor David Maddox says:

The former prime minister’s formative years was in her father’s corner shop in Grantham.

So on the 100th anniversary of her birth it seems appropriate that her latest successor as Tory leader has announced an end to business rates for shops on the high street.

In reality, this is maybe a last roll of the dice to save high street shops being killed off by competition from Amazon and other online providers. Ms Badenoch noted that she started working life in a McDonalds on the high street.

Kemi Badenoch has promised to ban doctors from going on strike, telling the Tory party conference: “Enough is enough”.

She said the Conservative Party is developing “detailed plans to make things work better” across Britain’s public services.

“In the NHS, industrial action has kept waiting lists high for far too long. Enough is enough. We will ban doctors from going on strike”, she said.

Kemi Badenoch has promised to cut the civil service back to the size it was before Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic if the Tories win the next election, saying that “fixing the state is next in our blueprint”.

“Since Brexit and Covid, the size of the civil service has swollen by over a third. There are now more than half a million civil servants.

“And have you noticed this government working a third better for you? I don’t think so.

“So we are going to reverse this. We are going to cut the civil service back to where it was in 2016.”

Our political editor David Maddox writes:

The Tory leader has said she will reverse the family farm tax, the VAT on private school fees, the family firm tax and the employment rights legislation.

But the big ticket item which many believe is killing the economy is the national insurance rise on employer contributions.

It has suppressed wages and reduced job vacancies. But the Tories know they cannot promise to reverse this because it will cost £20bn for the economy.