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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

I want to let others in, as I know that many hon. Members wish to contribute. I shall move on to one last point, which was not mentioned but which has been brought to my attention by a number of constituency cases—inheritance tax. The Chancellor announced last year that all widows would benefit from changes in inheritance tax. There is one very small group that is possibly the hardest hit—those whose husbands died before 1972. The people in that group are now very elderly; one such constituent is 106 and her husband died 40 years ago. The inheritance tax changes do not apply to that group of widows. I am sure that that is an oversight—at least, I would like to think so. I would hate to think that that group of very elderly widows was deliberately missed out. The money involved cannot be enormous. I hope that by the end of the Budget debate, perhaps tucked away somewhere in the Finance Bill, there will be a proposal from which every person who is liable for inheritance tax could benefit. I have covered the broad points that I wanted to mention and have picked up on one or two smaller points. Overall, the Budget was a yawn and will have little impact on the wider economy. All it will do is reinforce the difficulties that the coping classes face under this Government.