Election 2015: Ed Miliband plans to woo first-time buyers with stamp duty pledge

Ed Miliband hopes to win over first-time buyers when he promises to scrap stamp duty for prospective home owners and give them priority access on new homes built.

The Labour leader will claim that the proposal will save the vast majority (90%) of first-time buyers up to £5,000 ($7,584).

The policy will apply to all homes under £300,000 and it will cost the Treasury £225m a year. Labour said the measure will be funded by a clampdown on tax avoidance by landlords and, among other things, and cutting tax relief for "rogue landlords".

Miliband, who will speak in Stockton later, will says that there is nothing more British "than the dream of home-ownership, starting out in a place of your own".

"But for so many young people today that dream is fading with more people than ever renting when they want to buy, new properties being snapped up before local people get a look-in, young families wondering if this country will ever work for them," he will add.

"That is the condition of Britain today, a modern housing crisis which only a Labour government will tackle."

The Tories claimed the announcement will be "panicky" and "unfunded", citing the last Labour government's economic record.

"This panicky, unfunded announcement is something Labour have tried before – and it failed," a Conservative spokesman said.

"Coming from the people who crashed the housing market and repeatedly raised stamp duty, this won't distract from Miliband's inability to say what deals he will make with the SNP to prop him up in Downing Street."

The pre-election pledge will come after Labour promised to introduce rent controls and ban landlords from hiking charges higher than inflation.

The proposed move was criticised by Boris Johnson, who lambasted the policy as "pure nonsense" and said it was "a gimmick".

"I have some brilliant housing officials in City Hall. Let me tell you, they are not by any means all paid-up Conservative supporters, to put it mildly, and they all to a man and a woman think a policy of trying to impose rent controls is pure nonsense, a gimmick, wouldn't work," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr show.

Miliband's latest pledge will come with just 10 days to go before the general election on 7 May, with Labour one point ahead of the Tories (34% vs 33%) in the latest opinion poll from YouGov.