Finance Bill

This has been an interesting and useful debate that will enable us to tease out some of the issues that have been considered. I would like to place on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) for raising this matter and for constructively engaging with us on it. Two separate issues are involved, and perhaps it would be helpful to deal with them separately. The first concerns a point of principle; the second compassionate issues. Perhaps this will answer the point made by the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne). It is worth saying at the outset that we all have huge respect and admiration for anyone who is able to sustain a long friendship and relationship, such as those that exist between long-term cohabiting siblings. There are many families in which such relationships break down, and I have huge respect for the kind of relationships that we are talking about today. However, I do not believe that a parallel can be drawn between such relationships on the one hand, and marriages and civil partnerships on the other, as the latter involve particular legal and financial characteristics. The civil partnership issue is rather a distraction in this context. We are talking about marriage, including marriages involving same-sex couples, and the law and society view such marriages in a fundamentally different way compared with other close relationships such as blood relationships or close friendships. This issue has been tested in the courts, including the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Burden and Burden v. the United Kingdom, to which hon. Members have referred. The point was specifically discussed, so let me read from the findings of 29 April this year. The court said:"““The absence of… a legally binding agreement between the applicants””—" in this case, the two sisters—"““renders their relationship of cohabitation, despite its long duration, fundamentally different to that of a married or civil partnership couple””." It went on to say that"““marriage remains an institution which is widely accepted as conferring a particular status on those who enter into it””." That is the crucial point. Our policy on inheritance tax recognises the special position of marriage and its equivalent for homosexual couples, and we think a line should be drawn at that position. We will thus resist the new clause and amendments proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead. The hon. Member for Taunton was entirely right when he said that the cost of accepting the amendments would be low, despite the point of principle that I have set out, but the precedent from crossing the line could potentially open us up to far wider costs. We have already debated some of the issues, but if we accept the provision for long-term cohabiting siblings, where do we draw the line? Should it be extended to cousins, parents or grown-up children, for example? Why, then, for 10 years, and not for nine, eight or seven years; and why not for flatmates or any other long-enduring relationships or even business relationships? Once we had conceded the first point, the potential cost to the Exchequer could, I feel, be extremely large. That is the point of principle.