UK: Liberal Democrats announce £1.1bn mansion tax plan

The party's Treasury spokesman claimed that the property tax alone would raise enough money from homeowners like the billionaires Roman Abramovich and Lakshmi Mittal, to lift 300,000 low income employees and pensioners out of the tax bracket.

“We have seen the super-rich pouring their money not into job creating businesses but into acquiring mansions,” he said, as he turned his fire on bankers, businessmen and the Shadow Cabinet’s former members of the Bullingdon Club.

Mr Cable set out plans at the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth to raise more than £17 billion a year by targeting the wealthiest in society.

One of the central planks to the strategy is a new tax on properties worth more than £1 million. The party estimates that 250,000 people fall into this category and Mr Cable’s figures claim that £1.1 billion would be raised by a 0.5 per cent annual levy on the properties' values.