There are too many taxes in this country. I strongly support the long-term goal of the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, to replace council tax and stamp duty land tax - and possibly also business rates - with a single land value tax, and to eliminate inheritance tax.
These changes would actually lead to most households in this constituency paying less overall in tax than they do now.
For those renting, the future land value tax should be payable by landlords, not tenants. However, I am emphatic that no pensioner must ever be forced from their home by this tax - I would fight to ensure that people aged over 65 would have the right to defer their land value tax obligations until they passed away or sold the property.
In addition, I would demand that if any land value tax gets passed into law, any SDLT that homeowners have already paid gets deducted from it, to avoid taxing them twice for the same thing. With modern technology, this should not be hard to do at all.