Former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lawson, who served under Margaret Thatcher’s government, has called on the new man in the Treasury to reconsider the former government’s “crazy” stamp duty changes.

Speaking at Property Week’s RESI 2016 conference in Newport this week, Lawson slammed the existing high rate of stamp duty as a “tax on mobility”, and insisted that a rate reduction would almost certainly help to boost yields.

Lawson, who was also an avid Brexit campaigner, accepted that Britain was unlikely to secure “a special deal” as part of its separation from the European Union, but added that he did not expect the outcome of the EU vote to have an adverse impact on the residential property market.

He insisted that he could not see “in principle” why the UK’s decision to leave the EU would do any damage to the market, and said that residential property’s performance would likely rise – or fall – in line with the wider economy.