Finance Bill

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because he has helpfully said that the figure was as un-arbitrary as he could make it, even though there was inevitably an arbitrary element involved. It is obviously necessary to have a figure, because we do not want people exploiting the provisions for tax purposes, even though that might not be foremost in their mind as they approach their imminent demise. I only suggest that, were the figure to be higher, the proposal would probably achieve its objective in terms of the type of people that we all have in mind while providing an even greater safeguard against potential abuses. Hon. Members have asked where the provisions should stop. That is a fair point, and I hope that the Minister and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) will engage seriously with it. Stepbrothers and stepsisters, for example, would presumably come under the provisions. It would be strange if they did not, because it is increasingly prevalent nowadays for people to have stepbrothers and stepsisters rather than for all their siblings to have the same two parents. We could also consider other blood relatives. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) talked about cousins, but should we also consider second cousins? We could also consider people who have been adopted, carers and other categories of long-term cohabitants. It is reasonable that the Government should look at all the implications of introducing a measure of this kind. However, it upsets people when the state appears to exercise an excessive and somewhat arbitrary power over individual citizens who are going about their business and who feel that they are being unfairly victimised. This has been a motivation for newspapers and other campaigners, and it has real resonance for people to whom the provisions do not apply. They instinctively feel that it is wrong for a very old lady to have to leave the home that she has lived in for perhaps 90 or 95 years because the sister with whom she has lived for most of that period has died. The onus is on the Government to look into how we can address this issue. The Minister was quite right to say that the costs involved would be quite minute in the grand scheme of things. There would be no great financial barriers to making progress; it is only a matter of will.