Finance Bill

I am grateful for this opportunity to move the new clause and speak to the amendments, but I will not be pressing them to a vote because I have learned that the Conservative Opposition are not going to vote on them tonight, although we have the votes to win. I do not think that it is fair on Labour Members to ask them to vote against their Government just for the sake of it, when we cannot win. So the message can go out clearly to the country that we might well have got change tonight—the Liberal Democrats and the nationalists were coming in with us—but sadly, the Opposition votes have crumbled. There is a case to answer, however, and I very much hope that the Economic Secretary will respond to the main points in the debate. When historians write up the Labour Government, the two changes they will pick on as the most lasting are the ban on smoking and the establishment of civil partnerships. Both of them changed in a significant and good way the nature of our society, one because it used the law to set—[Interruption.] It is interesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright) is laughing; we may be so hard pushed at the election that the Government may have to fight it on those measures, so it would be well worth listening. If my seat was marginal I would be desperate to find some good messages to impart to the electorate. Let us return to the debate. The law banning smoking has changed behaviour, and with civil partnerships we have rewarded the loyalty and faithfulness of couples of the same sex. When those measures went through we became a more civilised society on both fronts. The new clause would try to extend that approach for siblings who have made a home together, many of whom, as a result of the current duties paid on property at death, have to sell their home and start all over again. I did not table the new clause as a plea that such people should have special tax status or because they are siblings living together, they should be exempt from tax, but merely so that, as for married couples and those in civil partnerships, the tax would be delayed until the second sibling had died. Of course, it is right that the Treasury should be worried when well-meaning souls try to move amendments that sound very good on the surface but could be used for tax avoidance purposes. That is why the new clause includes a requirement that siblings would have had to live together for at least 10 years before the provision would take effect. Clearly, given people's ability to manoeuvre around the tax system, if there were no such bar, it would pay them to move in when they knew a sibling was dying. Nobody is in favour of that. We want to reward decent behaviour. Many siblings affected by the current arrangements would undertake civil partnerships if the law allowed them to do so, but it does not. I ask Labour Members who oppose the proposal to think back to the time before civil partnerships. There were Members on the Labour Benches, and certainly some on the Conservative Benches, who thought that passing such an Act was against a law of nature, but once it was passed it was extraordinary how quickly people thought of it as a normal arrangement. One should reward such arrangements through the legal or tax systems, as would have occurred if there had been enough votes to support my proposal to give siblings the right to keep their family home until the second sibling dies. That is the point of the new clause, and I hope that I have explained its objectives. I fear that a message will go out from the Chamber that there are not enough votes to carry the proposal, but I believe it will be carried before too long, and I look forward with interest to hearing what the Minister and the Conservative spokesman say. I think we may hear a slightly more progressive line from the Liberal Democrats. I commend the new clause to the House.