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Finance Bill

If that is the case, why is the Conservative party's only manifesto commitment to cut tax on inheritance for millionaires' estates, so that the 3,000 richest estates in the country will each get £200,000? How can that be a defence of ordinary people? It is defending the richest estates and shows the wrong and distorted priorities of the Conservative party in the middle of a recession—so much for fiscal conservatism. There is a pattern here. In the 2005 election, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the Conservatives' plans for tax and benefits alone would have cost an extra £5 billion—unfunded except by higher borrowing. Before the credit crunch hit, they were calling for £10 billion of unfunded tax cuts. The idea that these guys want to bring borrowing down is a joke. They do not want to cut borrowing. They just want to cut spending. That is what this is really all about.