Labour’s budget assault on the family home: Will Reeves unleash the biggest tax raid in decades? Writes James Cleverly

As the winter weather begins to bite, Brits are downcast and anxious about what’s to come. With the Chancellor gearing up for more tax rises, the months ahead will be especially dark.

Labour may have beaten a chaotic retreat from their widely slammed plan for an outright income tax hike, but they are just shifting the focus of their tax grabs elsewhere – and they have the family home firmly in their sights once again.

We recently exposed their secret £9.4 billion plot to raise council tax across England. The vast majority of their much-trumpeted funding boost for local councils comes from hiking bills, making a mockery of their claim to be putting local people first. Council tax rose £109 a year on a typical Band D property this year.

And in the Spending Review, there was a further cumulative £1,143 increase in Band D council tax bills planned for this Parliament.

And just last week we found out that Labour are preparing to green light council tax increases of more than the legal limit of five per cent without a local referendum - a safeguard the Conservative Government brought in to prevent huge increases without proper scrutiny.

We could soon see rates go up by 10 per cent or more in some areas, every year; in fact, there would be no limit to the increase a council could request.

It’s in this bleak context that we saw reports this week that Rachel Reeves is planning another huge raid on 2.4 million properties, hoping to squeeze £450 million out of the families who live in them.

The policy depends on a revaluation of properties across Bands F, G and H.

This is patently unfair. Rerunning valuations for some properties but not others will mean two different system in operation – as if our tax laws weren’t complex and opaque enough already.

And it confirms that Labour are waging war on aspiration, applying a new, punitive system to people with more valuable homes.

Those who have worked hard and invested well will be forced to pay for it – some of them to the tune of £4,500 a year.

Ministers will no doubt say those with the broadest shoulders must bear the greatest burden. But we are talking here about nearly two and a half million families.

If each home were to have two children, we’d be looking at nearly 10 million people affected. This is not a surgical strike on wealthy families but another tax raid on a huge scale.

Inevitably Labour will use fiscal drag to pull more and more homes into scope. Ordinary people will wake up one day to find their family home has been labelled a mansion and they have a staggering new bill to pay.

Pensioners are especially vulnerable. Labour will pressure cash-poor pensioners to defer this tax – but with interest on top. This will be ‘pay as you die’. It will be a backdoor secondary inheritance tax, on top of Labour’s increases.

And don’t let Labour tell you this is about funding local services. Reports suggest Labour will apply a surcharge to tax bills for these properties – meaning that extra cash will go straight to the Treasury. Local councils won’t get a look in.

For a sense of what other horrors may lie ahead, we have only to look over the border to Wales, where the Labour government are planning a wider council tax revaluation. The Welsh government say revaluation will “make the system more progressive.”

But last time they did this, in 2005, overall bills went up massively, and four times as many homes moved up one or more council tax bands as moved down. This is not, then, just about getting more money out of the most expensive homes – it’s about taking more from all of us.

Keir Starmer himself has said the Welsh Labour Government is a “blueprint for what Labour can do across the UK.” That means higher taxes for ordinary people.

It also means damage to our property market that has already been frozen by Labour’s misguided housing policy and inability to deliver new homes.

In opposition Labour pledged to freeze council tax and denied they were considering a raid on higher-value properties. It looks like that was yet another broken promise.

And it’s all being done so the Chancellor can hand out billions more in welfare to appease the backbenchers she and the Prime Minister lack the backbone to face down.

While Labour plot more taxes on people’s homes, Conservatives want to cut tax as part of our plan to get Britain working again. That includes abolishing stamp duty on primary residences to unfreeze the housing market and help make home ownership a reality for young families, while boosting local businesses.

Labour’s war on the family home is just getting started. But we will always be on the side of hard-working people.

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Sir James Cleverly MP is the Shadow Housing Secretary

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