Finance Bill

The amendment is intended to allow an opportunity for debate on the Floor of the House—a debate that we have not yet had. I have no intention of pressing it to a vote; I wanted to use it as an opportunity to highlight how the nature of the tax is changing, and how what we see in the Bill is very different from the reality of many people’s experiences. We need to look at the make-up of estates that are paying inheritance tax. Despite property price increases since 1998, the number of estates paying inheritance tax worth more than £2 million has fallen by 8 per cent. In the meantime, among estates worth £300,000 to £500,000, the number has risen by 20 per cent. We are therefore seeing a reduction in the number of estates at the very top end that are paying inheritance tax, while the number at a much lower level paying the tax is increasing disproportionately. I appreciate that the Government are making efforts to redress that imbalance, as we saw from the changes made last year to the inheritance tax treatment of trusts. There are many arguments to be had about whether the policy was retrospective and its impact on decisions made a long while ago, but there was clearly a feeling that people on much higher incomes were finding a way of getting out of the system and avoiding paying inheritance tax. How many more estates does the Chief Secretary estimate will be caught as a result of those changes? I raised the key issue during discussion of last year’s Finance Bill. It is where the true inequality lies—a question that relates to lifetime gifts. People who have the benefit of easily disposable or liquid assets can make use of the current seven-year rule that applies to lifetime gifts, but people in the circumstances that I described earlier, whose only significant asset may be tied up in their estate because it is their property, cannot do so in the same way. Of course, I am not suggesting that we get rid of the rule on lifetime gifts, but I wonder whether the Chief Secretary is prepared to look again at the matter. Demographics have changed since the rule was introduced. My understanding was that the seven-year rule was introduced to give parents the opportunity to help their children to make their property purchase and get a foot on the property ladder, but the demographics have changed; people’s life-expectancy is changing, for example, and as a result, people are living longer than might have been expected when the limit was introduced.