Finance Bill

I am coming to that point. I was asking the Chief Secretary to consider whether the Government are prepared to look again at the seven-year limit. I wonder whether a time limit of 15 years would perhaps be more reasonable, taking into account how life expectancy has changed. Of course, I recognise that we must not get rid of lifetime gifts altogether and that, even with the seven-year time limit, there is a need to keep records. Increasing the limit to 15 years, however, might make the system a little bit fairer and would not impose too great a bureaucratic burden; after all, people keep records for capital gains tax purposes and so on. In conclusion, the point of the amendment was to raise two key questions. Does the Chief Secretary accept that the nature of inheritance tax is changing and that the decline in the number of very large estates paying inheritance tax and the increase at the lower end means that the tax is increasingly impacting on those who would consider themselves to be at middle-income level? Does he agree that unless there is a change either to the threshold or, perhaps, the lifetime gifts rule, as I have suggested, revenues will continue to rise? If house prices continue to rise, more and more people will be caught and the nature of inheritance tax will change fundamentally. Instead of a tax on significant wealth, inheritance tax is a tax that the significantly wealthy seem to be more than capable of avoiding paying, while those who are least able to afford it end up paying a much greater proportion of it.