Finance Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, although I think that it will fall on both the Minister and Conservative Members to answer the question: why not treat siblings as a separate category, as we rightly do married couples and those in civil partnerships? Our concern has to do with the threshold, but what the Minister says is absolutely right. We are not talking about all siblings who live together; we are talking about those with a relatively large estate. However, equally, it would be fair to say that an estate of £700,000-plus is not necessarily that unusual, and we are not talking about only the very wealthy. That point is worth bearing in mind with regard to inheritance tax more generally. As house prices have risen—not so much in recent months, but over the previous 12 to 15 years—many more estates are being affected by inheritance tax. That is a legitimate concern, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead on raising the issue. I certainly see that happening in my constituency: relatively modest houses are now above the inheritance tax threshold, so there is a legitimate concern. Of course, many people who do not have an estate above the threshold aspire to have such an estate. In many respects, because of the way in which inheritance tax has developed over recent years, it now affects far more families and people who hope one day to have an estate of that sort of size. There is a legitimate problem with inheritance tax. The most prominent case is that of the sisters from Marlborough, Sybil and Joyce Burden, who have written to every Chancellor of the day since 1976—some eight Chancellors so far, although one suspects that the turnover may increase in the next couple of years or so. The sisters have also taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights, where their application was recently rejected. I personally think that our tax law should be determined by the conclusions of our debates about such matters in this House, not by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. None the less, the sisters have raised an important issue, particularly in the context of the surviving sibling having to move out to pay the IHT liability. I suspect that the Economic Secretary may make two arguments in that context: first, that it is possible to pay off IHT over a period of 10 years or so, and one can defer some of the liability; and secondly, that equity release is available. Some of the equity in the property can be released, but given that many people have saved all their lives to own a property outright, there is, unsurprisingly, a great reluctance to do what essentially is remortgaging part of it to fund a tax liability. My concern with the right hon. Gentleman's proposal is about where precisely we draw the line. The line is currently clear with regard to married couples and civil partners, but what about, for example, long-term carers for elderly parents? The same case about protecting the family home could be made. What about adult disabled children who live with their parents? Again, a humane and reasonable case could be made for them. One is left with the question of where to draw the line.