This debate is in great contrast to that taking place in the House of Lords. Here we are debating a cut to inheritance tax, while the unelected House is championing the interests of working people by doing something that many more Government Members should have done: put their consciences in their feet and march through the correct Lobby.
We know from evidence already debated that the changes to inheritance tax will effectively cost the Exchequer £940 million by 2020-21. As the great Nye Bevan once said,
“the language of priorities is the religion of socialism”.
To Government Members who ask where our priorities lie, I say: they will always be in championing the interests of hard-working people and trying to improve the lot of the low-paid. For this reason, new clause 9 would delete the Government’s proposed changes to inheritance tax. That says exactly where our priorities are and where they should be. It is humiliating for the Chancellor and Prime Minister, having claimed at the recent Conservative party conference to be these great centrist modernisers,
that it is in fact the House of Lords that has had to do what the elected House of Commons should have done last week, and still has the opportunity to do in debates taking place tomorrow and on Thursday.
The “Conservative modernisation project mark 2” is now dead in the water, but let us remind Tory Members of “modernisation project mark 1”. We remember the Prime Minister promising “the greenest Government ever” when he was running with the huskies and hugging hoodies, yet here we see clause 45 of the Finance Bill, which will remove the exemption from the climate change levy for electricity produced by renewable sources from 1 August this year—it will be backdated. Conservative Members need to decide whether they are going to be the “true blue” Conservatives that we have seen represented in the unlikely forum of a debate on tampons and sanitary products, or whether they are the party of the centre ground and the working man and woman.