MPs Call for Stamp Duty Reform: What the Housing Committee Report Means for Buyers

On 9 June 2026, the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee published its report on the Affordability of home ownership. The cross-party committee concluded that the Government must reform stamp duty as part of a wider package to help first-time buyers onto the housing ladder.

Crucially, the MPs did not call for abolition. They described stamp duty as “a valuable source of revenue for public finances” and recommended that the Government instead launch a formal consultation, before the end of 2026, to examine potential alternatives to the current tax. They also said any reform should be carried out alongside a reform of council tax.

The report is a recommendation to Government, not a change in the law. Stamp duty rates and thresholds remain exactly as they have been since April 2025. But it adds a cross-party, parliamentary voice to a debate that until now has been driven mainly by the property industry and think tanks.

The committee asked the Government to weigh any alternative against four tests: its revenue-raising power, its impact on friction in the property market, how progressive it is, and how fair it is. Within that framework, the report set out four broad directions the consultation could explore.

These echo many of the ideas already circulating among economists and campaigners. For the full landscape, see our roundup of every stamp duty reform proposal on the table in 2026.

The committee was explicit that stamp duty is only one lever. The report frames reform as part of a broader affordability package that includes supply, empty homes, and savings support.

• Empty homes: with hundreds of thousands of residential properties standing empty, many for months or years, the report wants councils given clearer and stronger powers to bring long-term empty homes back into use.
• Housebuilding targets: the MPs called on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to publish annual homebuilding targets for each remaining year of this Parliament, with progress updates every six months, in support of the 1.5 million new homes pledge.
• Savings products: the committee welcomed the planned replacement for the Lifetime ISA but warned against a static property price cap, which would make the product unusable in higher-priced parts of the country.

The thread running through all of it is that taxing transactions less, on its own, will not fix affordability if supply does not also rise.

The committee report landed in the same week that the mortgage industry sharpened its own criticism. Sebastian Murphy, group director at JLM Mortgages, told Mortgage Introducer that stamp duty is “a barrier to people moving at the top end and at the bottom end”.

A recurring theme is the downsizing deadlock: older homeowners in larger family properties who will not pay tens of thousands of pounds in stamp duty to move to something smaller. That keeps family homes off the market and tightens supply for the buyers who need them most.

First-time buyers face the opposite squeeze. Since April 2025 the first-time buyer nil-rate threshold has been £300,000, a level brokers say bears little relation to prices across much of southern England. One broker cited a young couple buying a £400,000 new-build in Kent who paid £5,000 in stamp duty, a charge that would have been zero under the £425,000 threshold in place until March 2025. Several in the industry want the first-time buyer threshold raised to £500,000.

See how the relief works in practice in our first-time buyer complete guide, or read why 37,000 first-time buyers still paid stamp duty in 2024-25.

There is a reason the committee insisted on “a credible alternative in place” before any change. The same week, tax analyst Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates published a detailed analysis showing that the April 2025 threshold rise did not backfire. It raised money.

The analysis concluded that while there will be a long-term fall in transactions of roughly 25,000 to 30,000 moves a year, the higher rate more than compensates. HMRC cash receipts for 2025-26 came in at £15.159bn, around £507 million above the Office for Budget Responsibility's pre-year forecast. In other words, the standard bands sit some distance from the top of the so-called Laffer curve, where a tax cut would pay for itself.

That is the bind facing the Treasury. The economic case against stamp duty is strong, but cutting it costs real money that has to be found elsewhere. It is exactly why the committee asked for a consultation on a replacement rather than a simple rate cut. For the longer revenue picture, see our breakdown of record SDLT receipts and the OBR forecast.

A select committee report does not bind the Government, which must respond formally, usually within two months. The key date to watch is the committee's requested deadline for a consultation: before the end of 2026. If the Treasury accepts that timetable, the Autumn Budget 2026 becomes the obvious moment either to announce a consultation or to signal its direction.

For now, nothing has changed for buyers. We will update this page as the Government responds. In the meantime, read the Spring Statement 2026 coverage for the most recent fiscal context.