Inheritance Tax, National Insurance and VAT

Lord Browne of Belmont Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Morrow’s Question.

The tax changes made in the recent Budget will clearly affect many parts of society throughout all the regions of the United Kingdom. With reference to the increase in national insurance contributions, it is clear that additional tax burden will fall not only on employers but on other taxpayers, particularly employees, who may face wage cuts or indeed the loss of their jobs. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast in 2024 that workers would bear around 60% of the national insurance increase, rising to 76% in the medium term. Surely, similar amounts of tax could have been raised without causing such harm to the labour market. How does such an imposition sit with Labour’s pledge not to increase taxes on working people?

I fully concur with the justified criticisms that other noble Lords have made of the abolition of inheritance tax agricultural property relief on farmland. It seems abundantly clear to me that this relief is a financial necessity for hard-working farming families, who have perhaps passed their land on through many generations. Surely the law should have been amended to ensure that those who are not working farmers and who have invested in agricultural land purely to avoid inheritance tax would not be entitled to the relief. Is it not time that the Government started to talk up the economy rather than deal in the negatives?