Vince Cable was the main speaker at ALTER Spring Conference Fringe, on the day he was made a Vice President of the group. We had asked him to talk not about LVT itself, but about a wider range of radical Liberal economic policies that link to LVT. The meeting was intended to ‘launch’ the ALTER project to mark the 1909 Peoples Budget centenary with a book of essays.
Alter Chair Cllr Tony Vickers chaired the meeting, introducing the speakers and asking ALTER Secretary Jock Coats to explain why we’re planning the book.
Vince Cable surprised us by immediately but firmly returning the focus to LVT, asking ALTER to continue its valued role by “challenging the Party to come up with practical policies on the subject”, translating ideas espoused by a wide and growing range of modern commentators, such as Sam Brittain and the Editor of the ‘Economist’. He remarked on the “extreme and growing inequalities of wealth” and stated that “it is widely understood that rent should be taxed”, citing the gift of carbon permits to large energy producing companies and utilities as examples of how not to deal with “natural opportunities to accrue wealth”.
“There is a dangerous illusion that private landed property can be treated like a bank”, he said. “We have to find ways to tackle our obsession with private property”. He concluded his speech to around 100 Lib Dem members by posing two questions that he wanted ALTER to answer:-
1. How can the Party take forward its commitment to LVT in ‘non threatening’ ways?
2. Do we leave the current property tax system alone and capture rent in other ways?
On behalf of the younger ALTER membership, former Federal Executive member and Lib Dem Voice figure James Graham responded from the platform. He said that currently the country was “going backwards on social mobility” and claimed this was largely due to the failure of Governments during recent decades to tax wealth acquired through property. “We need to deploy stronger moral arguments in support of LVT” but recognise that “inter-generational arguments can be divisive” and we should never forget there are asset-poor older people as well as asset-rich ones. “The division in society is not simply between old/rich and young/poor. We need to emphasise solidarity among all who rent.” Graham saved special disapproval for Inheritance Tax.
A lively discussion session followed. Gordon Williams wanted to know if LVT would capture the value which good schools added to their catchment area. Bernard Salmon wanted Vince to say if he supported the old Liberal policy of co-ownership – mutuality – but got a luke-warm response: “Workers today are not so comfortable with co-ownership. They’d rather not have their assets tied up in their employment.” However Vince didn’t dismiss the idea and pointed to the success of the rather complex John Lewis Partnership model.
Neil Upstone of Cambridge was another who supported mutuality – in his case, it was community land trusts that interested him. Jock Coats, Chair of Oxfordshire CLT, bemoaned the difficulty of acquiring land to put into such Trusts and felt they would help make land use more dynamic. He applauded Vince for keeping the pressure on his colleagues and ALTER to develop policies on land value capture.
Richard Gadsden of St Helens wanted to know if ALTER supported using auctions for landing slots and other natural monopoly opportunities. Vince said that even Richard Branson supported the idea. Certainly, said Vince, he wanted just this kind of fiscal measure to capture economic rent.
A young lady from Vince’s own Constituency in Twickenham made the perceptive point that people tend to become disengaged from the Welfare State through acquiring personal property wealth. This was the kind of question that ALTER wanted to explore but time ran out on the discussion and Tony finished by thanking Vince and announcing his (and Leader Nick Clegg's) appointments as Vice Presidents of ALTER .