---

Finance (No. 2) Bill

I do not think that that is true; indeed, there are many examples to the contrary. I have not inherited any wealth up to this point and I do not have great prospects in that regard, but I do not begrudge those who come from much richer families than mine doing so. If that money trickles down through the generations, it very often does far more good than if it trickles into the sticky hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which seems the only alternative on offer in today’s debate. It would be much better if the inheritance tax system recognised that a person is not very rich just because they have a flat or house that might now be worth a lot of money. There are a number of elderly residents in Kensington and Chelsea living in two or three-bedroom flats that are perhaps worth the best part of £1 million who might be on quite low incomes. Is the Labour party saying that those people must move to realise their asset and to show that they have some wealth? I want to live in a country where, if such people want to carry on living in their two-bedroom flats, they can do so. They should not be treated as rich because, even though they are low incomes and have no other assets to pay all the taxes that Labour now wants to impose on them, they happen to live in a part of the country that has rather high flat and house prices. I hope that the Paymaster General will deal with the inequality of house prices nationwide, which is not always, as Labour seems to imply, good news for those in high house price areas. Such people could be worse off than those in low house price areas because they have to pay a disproportionately higher proportion of their assets and income in order to secure and maintain their property. In other words, the principle can work in the opposite direction. The final issue is what should happen in future. If the Paymaster General can persuade us that there is no effective element of retrospection and that there is an injustice to tackle, we have then to test whether she has found a route to tackling the injustice and inequality that she sees, and whether she would do so in a way that would make Britain a more prosperous and equal society. I suspect that she will achieve the opposite of what she wishes to achieve. I do not want to live in a country where only the super-rich can prosper by—thanks to their access to the really good lawyers—finding a way around the more complicated regulations that the Government have come up with. I do not want to live in a society that sends out the message that it is better to go offshore or live abroad. I know that offshore trusts have been popular with some Labour donors and Ministers, but they are not a particularly good thing to encourage. It is much better to have an honest, low-tax system that is the same for everybody, and which encourages more enterprise and success. I hope that the Paymaster General with think twice, three times or however long it takes and understand that her proposals contain several objectionable parts. First, retrospection will disrupt family arrangements. Secondly, the suspicion that all trusts are evil tax dodges is clearly not true. Thirdly, on the Paymaster General’s idea that such complexity will squeeze the rich and help the poor, I suspect that the rich will escape because they will have access to good lawyers and accountants and can always go offshore. In short, I urge the Government to drop this proposal.