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Finance (No. 2) Bill

That would indeed be a highly desirable result and the Government still have the opportunity to do that if they so wish. I certainly hope that they do. This is the Minister’s last chance to save divorcing couples and people in a civil partnership facing relationship breakdown from an unwelcome new tax charge, and I hope that she will seize that opportunity. The Government went badly wrong with schedule 20. Their preconceptions about trusts and the people who use them were fraught with misunderstanding and, frankly, with prejudice. The Star Group of solicitors, expert in the field of trusts, points out the simple truth that has somehow eluded the Government, that"““trusts are very often set up for reasons that are nothing whatever to do with tax…they are widely used to prevent families’ assets from being squandered…to protect individuals from themselves or others””" and to maintain family harmony. The Government have failed to produce any empirical evidence of the widespread use of trusts for avoidance purposes, apart from bare assertions and a couple of theoretical examples. Nor have they responded to the direct request of the Treasury Committee to provide evidence for their assertion that only a minority of a minority of 100,000 discretionary trusts would be affected by schedule 20. The Government may have U-turned on a number of hugely important points, but schedule 20 still imposes new taxes on thrift, prudence and responsible behaviour, on the sick and the dying, on divorce, and on the mentally ill and disabled. I close by quoting from an e-mail that I received just a few days ago that illustrates the high human cost of this whole debacle. It reads:"““My father was seriously ill earlier this year. His will is in favour of his 6 grandchildren and contains a trust with the age set at 25…Because of the Finance Bill, I had to arrange for his solicitor and both executors””—" to see him—"““so he could say whether he wanted them to maintain 25 or pay the penalty or revert to 18. So there he was lying in bed coughing up a lung, 88 years old…terrified of dying, and I had to explain all this. He cried for a couple of days after from distress. How many others I wonder have had to do””—" the same?