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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I accept that people who transfer assets under the spouse exemption provisions do not need a trust to safeguard that exemption. I also accept that the gift provisions do not require a trust to be imposed between donor and recipient, and that assets should be transferred to a recipient when that is the donor’s clear intention. Assets should not be held in a halfway house that means that the recipient does not get control and that the state does not get the inheritance tax to which it is entitled. Ending that possibility is precisely what the proposed changes are designed to achieve. The new clause and the other amendments would once again make it possible for the wealthy few to use inheritance tax exemptions and rules to get reliefs beyond their entitlement. By the targeted use of changes to the particular types of trust being used in such cases, the Government propose to preserve the rules and make sure that they are used as they were always intended. For that reason, if the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet and her hon. Friends push the new clause to a vote, I shall ask my hon. Friends to oppose it and I look forward to debating the provision in detail in the Standing Committee.