SerpApi.Org
Andy Burnham’s first week in office has already raised difficult questions about standards.
Angela Rayner’s return as Housing Secretary, less than a year after she resigned over an underpaid stamp duty bill (which was uncovered by The Telegraph), will leave some voters wondering whether the standards expected of politicians resemble the ones imposed on everyone else.
I want to be fair about this.
HMRC concluded she did not deliberately avoid tax and she settled what was owed. This is not about denying anyone the chance to return after a mistake, and it is not really about Rayner at all.
It is about the judgement involved in putting housing – and by extension stamp duty policy – back in the hands of the person whose own stamp duty affairs forced a resignation.
Optics matter because they shape trust. If you are asking the public to follow increasingly complicated tax rules, confidence in the system depends on the people writing those rules being seen to meet the highest standards themselves. Fairly or not, this appointment makes that harder.
For millions of homeowners, stamp duty is one of the largest cheques they will ever write to the Treasury.
Get it wrong and HMRC expects you to put it right, usually with interest and penalties attached. Not everyone has the option of drawing a line under it and moving on.
The timing is the part I find hardest to follow. Burnham has spoken repeatedly about restoring trust in politics and turning the page on the past. Yet one of his first appointments invites the opposite question.
His Government’s first week might have been about growth, housebuilding and the economy. Instead, some of the conversation has returned to a controversy many assumed was settled.
That is a shame, because housing genuinely needs leadership. Britain does not lack demand for homes: it lacks supply, planning reform and confidence.
First-time buyers remain locked out of the property market, moving home has become even more expensive, and stamp duty itself discourages people from relocating, downsizing and moving up the ladder. These are big problems, and solving them takes political capital and public trust.
Rayner understands the brief. She knows the department and will not need months to get up to speed. If she can accelerate planning reform, lift housing supply and lower the barriers to ownership, the industry will welcome it, and I would be glad to see it.
But competence is not the whole test. Every announcement she makes on stamp duty, taxation or housing fairness may now be read through the lens of her own tax affairs. That is not entirely fair. Politics rarely is.
In the end, this is less about any one politician than about the standards a government chooses to hold itself to. Voters are remarkably forgiving of honest mistakes. What they find harder to accept is any sense that the rules work differently depending on who you are.
Andy Burnham promised a fresh start. My hope is that the rest of his housing agenda tells a stronger story than this first appointment.
Matt Coulson is founder of mortgage broker Heron Financial
Recommended
The £10bn stamp duty bill crushing the South
