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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for that offer, which I shall consider, but I suspect that my name will need to be put forward by someone else. I am delighted that hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned the national health service, because I was wondering how I could drag the NHS into this debate. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) has mentioned more investment in medical technology. For example, there is a complete lack of proton beam therapy for spinal tumours in this country, and we are still sending people to Boston in the States, to Paris and to Switzerland. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has mentioned NHS deficits, and an example was mentioned to me today. As a consequence of NHS deficits and the mismanagement of Herceptin, a cancer network in the midlands has had to freeze the use of one of its four linear accelerators for the treatment of cancer to reserve money for Herceptin. I am going to speak mostly about clause 157 and schedule 20. I am not as fortunate as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), in that I have to declare an interest because I am sure that a trust that I have set up is caught by the Bill. I do not regard myself as one of the super-rich—I am an inhabitant of middle England in every sense of the term—yet I believe that I am caught by this provision. Those of us who saw the list of the 1,000 super-rich in The Sunday Times yesterday and were appalled that such a high proportion of them made their money in the gambling industry have no objection to such people being caught for extra taxation. An accountant who is a constituent of mine wrote to me on behalf of a large number of clients of his firm, many of whom are also my constituents. Many hon. Members made his point very well, but I will quote him because he puts it so succinctly:"““These proposals will force my clients either to rearrange the perfectly legitimate steps they have taken to safeguard their children’s futures (with all the costs that this will entail), or, they will be forced to distribute trust funds to their children at 18—providing them with access to significant funds at an early age.””" I agree with the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke), who intervened on the hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers) to say that this is a family decision and that parents and grandparents should know at what age they think that their children and grandchildren can take on this large responsibility. I wrote to my constituent for details, and he told me that 35,000 clients of this particular group are likely to be caught by the provision. When I asked whether they were the sort of people who are the middle rich from middle England, he said:"““Such a client might typically own a house worth say £400,000 and have other assets amounting to a further £400,000—hardly in the category of the super rich but nevertheless faced with a significant potential IHT liability. His/her income upon retirement is likely to be modest compared with income whilst in work.””" He went on:"““My point is that the creation of trusts of this nature is sensible and legitimate tax planning and not primarily tax avoidance and is carried out by a large section of the population who have prudently saved throughout their lifetime as surely they should be encouraged to do.””" It is the retrospective nature of this threatened legislation that makes it so extraordinarily difficult. Julie Morrison of Ernst and Young writes:"““The Chancellor has spoken of alleviating the inheritance tax burden for middle-income families yet is penalising those who thought they had a secured a future for their family. The measure is retrospective for many trusts, laying to waste . . . carefully laid plans””."