How would hiking tax on landlords impact London's renters?

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to the Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, with a push, thrust, throw and trip, we're exploring sumo in the city as the traditional Japanese wrestling sport finds new enthusiasts in the UK. Younger people in the UK are really into J-pop, match-a-lattos are everywhere, Sunny Angel toys are being collected. So I feel like it's really fertile ground for sumo to have a moment all over again. The only obstacle really is just that there aren't enough top coaches at the moment in the UK to maybe meet rising demand.

0:50So it's really about laying the foundations for the next generation.

0:59But first. Today, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been compared to the Black Adder character Baldrick, known for his cunning but doomed to fail plans, by property expert Kirsty Alsop. It's all because the Treasury is considering hiking tax for landlords by imposing national insurance on rental income ahead of this autumn's budget. Currently, national insurance contributions do not have to be paid on most earnings from property, pensions and savings, while employees with other forms of income are hit with the 8 % levy. Officials are looking at proposals to impose a levy on property earnings to try and raise£2 billion, as the Chancellor is desperately searching for ways to raise cash amid dire warnings about the state of public finances.

1:46It sparked fears that if this policy is implemented, landlords might sell up or seek to push the additional costs onto tenants by hiking rents. Joining us now is The Standards' Chief Political Correspondent, Rachel Burford. Rachel, can you tell me a bit more about these potential plans? Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering a tax on landlords that will target the income from rents. This is something, there's a lot of speculation about what's coming up in the autumn budget and obviously Rachel Reeves has a£40 billion shortfall in the public finances she needs to plug. This would raise about£2 billion, according to the reports.

2:25The proposal is kind of centred on the expansion of national insurance to include rental income. Currently, it's exempt from that levy. This will be a significant potential extra source of funds, is what some sort of Labour insiders were saying last night. Why is the Chancellor taking this action? And what has the reaction been so far? Officials in the Treasury are said to see this as a way of targeting unearned revenue, which is how they describe sort of rent people that own property and rent them out. But obviously there's been a lot of speculation this morning and landlord associations sort of hitting out this saying it can be quite expensive to be a landlord.

3:00There's a lot of other measures that the government have brought in that are making it even more expensive to be a landlord. These extra costs and this hit on what would essentially be landlord profits, which could be passed on to tenants. Ben Beadle, the chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, said that further punitive tax hikes on the rental sector will lead only to rents going up, hitting the very households the government wants to protect. It would come on top of last year's increase to stamp duty on homes, purchase to rent and proposals expecting landlords to pay up to £15 ,000 on energy efficiency improvements to properties.

3:34Particularly in cities like London, rents are already extremely expensive. People are paying well over a third of their income now on rent in a lot of boroughs. There are obviously two sides to this and it could be quite concerning for some tenants but obviously Rachel Reeves and the Chancellor and her team have a significant gap in the public finances to plug and they see rental income as a sort of a good thing to target because it is something that perhaps voters would support. So could this policy actually help grow the economy? There have been people on the media around this morning sort of slamming these plans saying that they will hit the economy rather than make it grow.

4:10Kirsty Alsop, who is a property expert and presents property programmes on TV, she compared the Chancellor to Baldrick from Blackadder, who's known for his doomed-to-fail cunning plans. She said this would be economically destabilising. The Chancellor's trying to think about ways to save money and improve the economy, but actually what she's doing is just taking it from people, and this will have a knock-on impact on tenants. The problem the Treasury and the Chancellor have got at the moment is there are big holes in the public finances and the economy is not growing as much as the Chancellor had hoped.

4:43Certain plans they were going to put in place, like changes to the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and changes to the benefit system that were designed to save money, been sort of backtracked on after a big public backlash. She has to find money elsewhere. And targeting landlords is not going to be an unpopular policy with the vast majority of the public who are not landlords. If this does have a knock-on effect to tenants who are already spending a large amount of their income on rent, this could have a negative impact in the economy because then those people have got less money to spend out and about and doing other things.

5:20Obviously, these plans are all just speculation at the moment anyway, so we don't actually know whether they're being put in place and we've got to wait until the Chancellor's budget, which is expected around November time. But at the moment, I think things are sort of leaking out and the government is kind of seeing how the public reacts. The real estate consultancy Knight Frank said this morning that a lot of landlords are already selling up ahead of the renter's rights bill that's coming in. There's tougher green regulations that are coming in for landlords as well. And obviously the increase in stamp duty that could have an impact on people buying homes in the first place, that's all sort of coming in.

5:55And they're arguing that this is another disincentive and that would further reduce the supply of homes. There are people who need to rent and there's particularly a lot of younger people coming into the workforce for the first time. People who are moving around when they find new jobs and things like that. There is a lot of backlash against these proposals already this morning. I think the argument that landlords are certainly making this morning is that the government needs to encourage a larger supply of good quality rental homes rather than cracking down on any profits that landlords may be making.

6:31And have we heard anything more from the Treasury? What a Treasury spokesperson did say this morning was that the best way to strengthen the public finances was by growing the economy. They said changes to tax and spend policy are not the only ways of doing this. They pointed to their planning reforms, which are expected to grow the economy by 6.8 billion and cut borrowing by 3.4 billion. Treasury also said they're committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible, which is why at last autumn's budget, they protected working people's pay slips and kept our promise not to raise the basic higher or additional rate of income tax, employee national insurance or VAT.

7:06And obviously what employers would say there is yes, but you raised national insurance on employers, which has perhaps resulted in fewer people being employed and a lower number of jobs. So I think the Treasury, they're working on very fine lines here and trying to balance their books in the best way they can without annoying too many people, which is an extremely tough job to do, particularly in this economy. Finally, what do you make of Kirsty Alsop's comparison of Chancellor Rachel Reeves to Baldrick? It's a good analogy. I don't think we can quite say it's a Baldrick style plan. I can see the economics behind it.

7:42This is the Labour government, even when they were in opposition, they were talking about taxes on landlords to pay for social care all the way back in 2021. So it's not perhaps a surprise that a Labour party would go after landlords rather than putting taxes onto working people and taxing people's payslips. But I mean, it's the knock on effects that may have. And landlords are certainly saying what is to stop us upping rents to help plug the gap that we will see in our income. let's go to a break coming up in part two why londoners are falling for the ancient sport of sumo we'll see you back here in just a moment

8:26welcome back it's been 40 years since the british sumo association was founded and now this form of wrestling is gaining new followers and fighters from rising stars to sumo clubs in the capital. In October, in a milestone moment, the Grand Sumo Tournament will be hosted at London's Royal Albert Hall, marking the first time in 20 years that the competition is hosted outside of Japan. I spoke to freelance writer Kyle McNeill about why sumo is gaining popularity. So how does sumo work as a sport? The kind of aim of the game is very easy to understand all you have to do is force your opponent out of the ring or force them to touch the ground with any body part other than their feet and bouts are really really quick so they're about 10 to 15 seconds so they're kind of over in the blink of an eye but what seems deceptively simple is actually a lot more complex when you dig into it technically there are 82 winning moves because of all the different ways that you're able to force your opponent out of the ring or flip them or slam them.

9:32So that kind of lends a lot of complexity. So if you're watching it for the first time, you might not focus on their footwork, but that's actually a lot more nuanced than you might first think. It's also a very traditional sport, very sacred, very ritualistic as well. So it's very revered in Japan, connected to jinto traditions. It started professionally in the 1600s but you can trace it way back to 23 BC in terms of the earliest fights sumo literally means wrestling so at the core it's a wrestling match obviously but it's really a kind of grueling training regime for the fighters and diet as well they live and train in stables it's called and they have to eat huge amounts of sumo stew which is a broth with all sorts of protein vegetables noodles to pile on the pounds and most professional sumo wrestlers weigh in at around 300 pounds so it's about putting on that weight and maintaining it and then using that brute force to beat your opponent.

10:36And why is the Grand Sumo Tournament now taking place in London? So it's actually been held at the Royal Albert Hall before back in 1991 which was part of Japan week at the time. It does have that history in the venue though obviously it was a one-time thing and it was very much a spectacle. And there were a few teething issues in terms of the organization, in terms of having to import some of the materials over from Japan, and even some of the organization in terms of ensuring that the toilet seats could bear the load of the professional sumo wrestlers and so on. But it went down very well and was kind of part of this early wave of trying to bring sumo to the UK.

11:15Now it's coming back. I think it's rising a real wave of this UK-Japan cultural exchange going on there's been some really significant trade deals from both governments Hiroshi Suzuki who's the Japanese ambassador for the UK has gone viral several times over since taking up the post he's just obsessed with British pop culture and he took Paddington over to Japan on a trip with him and he's become this real figurehead of this new culture exchange so I think it's really part of that there's 40 wrestlers 40 pro wrestlers or rikishi they're called coming over from Japan. Do you think sumo will actually catch on in the UK?

11:54There are a few obstacles in its way but it is really growing especially the grassroots sport so amateur sumo isn't tethered to some of the rituals and rules that professional sumo is for example female fighters are allowed to get involved and also there's a lot more leeway in terms of the weight you have to be so it's making a lot more accessible and these grassroots clubs are popping up all over the UK including London sumo club which is mainly based in wandsworth which has a free session for people who want to try out the sport so it's about getting people involved there was also one professional fighter who tried to carve out a korea in japan his name was nathan strange and he fought for a year from 1989 to 1990 but he was ostracized by some of the wrestlers in his stables he was getting a lot of media attention there was a lot of envy so he actually hung up his boots but we do have one hopeful called Nicholas Tarasenko, who's a 16-year-old from Hull who has just moved to Japan.

12:50He's been accepted into a really prestigious stable and he's been learning Japanese in his spare time outside school and training and is now taking the plunge that is hoping to become what would be our second professional wrestler or competing in Japan. This all sounds great, but tell me more about some of the more controversial aspects of the sport. There's been issues surrounding match fixing and ironically some of the sumo wrestlers literally throwing fights. There's been some real tragic issues surrounding physical abuse in the stables in terms of the really harsh, disciplined training regimes.

13:28Also concerns surrounding the diet. Some studies, they're very mixed in terms of the health studies. The fact that sumo wrestlers are so active means that a lot of potential health issues are kept at bay. But some studies have suggested that professional sumo wrestlers could live around 10 to 15 years less than the average Japanese male due to the severity of the training, but also the fact that they're carrying so much weight and have to constantly eat thousands and thousands and thousands of calories to stay competitive and have that brute force and that brawn. The kind of positive thing is that amateur sumo also wants to make it as accessible as possible to as many people.

14:09Amateur sumo is actually becoming more popular in Japan. That's being mirrored in the UK. And I think what's really exciting is that back in Japan, and for the first time since 1996, all 90 match days for the grand tournaments in Japan have sold out. So it's having this real boom. In fact, one of the only issues is there's a scarcity of fighters rather than fans. And what makes sumo so unique? It's so different in person compared to watching it online. You don't get, obviously, the sense of the atmosphere, but also it's over so quickly that it's almost time seems to stand still. You have to really focus your concentration and take in as many of the really actually quite subtle movements going on in those 10 to 15 seconds, usually.

14:53I think what's really special about sumo is that it combines athleticism and violence, But also there's this element of ballet to it almost and this kind of quite subtle dance between the two wrestlers. So it's this real mix of brute force and intelligence and quite a gentle agility almost in some ways. Finally, is there anything else you want to add? This kind of concurrent revival of both professional sumo and amateur sumo, which is bringing more people in, really suggests that sumo could have a big moment in the next few years. Sit alongside a lot of the other contact sports, wrestling based sports.

15:39I think one of the potential obstacles will be balancing that sense of tradition and preserving the real sacred rituals that are part of the original sport. Considering the momentum behind it and the growing strength of the grassroots seen both in Japan and the UK, the outlook is really positive.

16:02And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. if you'd like to get in touch please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here tomorrow at 5 p.m we'll see you then