Inheritance Tax

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 14th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is quite right. I urge every Member of this House to spend time with family businesses in their constituency; there are excellent organisations such as Family Business UK that would be delighted to make the introduction.

My right hon. Friend is also absolutely right about the relative dearth on the Government Benches of business and private sector experience and of an understanding of how the economy works. However, that is capable of remediation, if only Government Ministers and Members were to seek to educate themselves on the benefits to their constituencies and constituents of family businesses.

We Conservatives will not let a spiteful, prejudiced Labour party destroy those family businesses, which is why we will—

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Griffith]

I would be delighted to give way and for the hon. Member to talk about the family business contribution in his own constituency, and why he will therefore be supporting the Opposition motion this afternoon.

[Gareth Snell]

There are many wonderful family businesses in Stoke-on-Trent, not least Potclays, which makes clay for the pottery industry. The hon. Gentleman talks about this spiteful tax; he will know that it was introduced in 1986 under Mrs Thatcher. Did he think it was a spiteful tax when she introduced it?

[Andrew Griffith]

There have been exemptions for family business far beyond that. This goes across multiple generations—the origins date back to the 1960s, and every Labour Government under every Labour Prime Minister have understood the contribution of family businesses, including to those in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

We could, of course, talk about many of the other headwinds that business face, but I would then be deviating from the subject of debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that many colleagues want to speak this afternoon, so I will not talk about the higher energy costs, or the costs of hiring, or the red tape that this Government have imposed or the national insurance jobs tax, among many other things. We will not talk about any of those things, Madam Deputy Speaker!

Inheritance tax more generally was once a tax paid by the privileged few—the super-rich, a tiny sliver of a minority of taxpayers and estates. Today, however—these are independent numbers that the Government will understand—inheritance tax is a tax on ordinary middle-class families in every corner of our country. I invite the Minister to challenge these numbers when he eventually responds. By 2030, one in six families will face an inheritance tax bill. At the start of previous decades, that was one family in 20. The scope of this tax has dragged so many more people into its terrible net, and it is only getting worse. One in five homes last year was sold at a price above the threshold where an inheritance tax liability would arise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith]

As I have said many times in the House, I think the G7 is the wrong comparator peer group. We are not the fastest growing member of the G7. If the hon. Member took the time to read more than the headlines handed out by the Labour Whips, he would know that yesterday the International Monetary Fund downgraded the growth forecast for our wonderful country and enterprise for 2027. That is what Labour is doing to our economy: it has reduced the rate of growth.

While the G7 largely consists of relatively sclerotic economies that suffer from the same levels of indebtedness and lack of growth as the United Kingdom, in the meantime the G20 is coming up on the outside track. Those are the more prosperous countries, and they are building airports, building infrastructure and forming capital. Their companies are taking on the world and their young people have more job opportunities.

Not that the Labour Government have any interest in calibrating, counting and identifying those who are leaving, but that is why the flow of wealth creators and ambitious young people is not to our wonderful country, with its history and heritage, but from our country to those economies that are successfully growing faster than ours. One of the reasons for that—to conclude—is that those countries are more understanding of family businesses, more understanding of family farms, and more sympathetic and on the side of those who work hard to create wealth and a better life for themselves, for their family and for the next generation.

[Gareth Snell]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your counsel. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) has just given a rather long speech about the benefits of family-owned businesses, but he failed to declare that one of the biggest beneficiaries of his policy would be JCB, which just happens to have given him £30,000 over the last year. Should that matter have been declared before the speech was made?

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Gareth Snell

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 15th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend, with his experience, is exactly right. Just think about the impact on a small business of a fee of that magnitude and the length of time it takes to get justice.

What is going to happen? This is a really important point. Those on the Government Benches will be living this reality over the remainder of their term, and they will have to account for it. Businesses will be discouraged from hiring anybody without a perfect CV and a proven track record of work. Who are we talking about? We are talking about young people, people with dyslexia and related conditions, and people with a period of inactivity on their CVs—such as former prisoners seeking a second chance to go straight. Those will be the victims of that particular measure.

Labour Ministers should realise that they will be the first victims of disagreeing with Lords amendment 62. The long-standing principle here is a simple one: we should not be allowing strikes to be called when a majority of union members have not even voted, let alone voted in favour. A strike could still proceed with just over a quarter of those eligible. Opposing this amendment will guarantee that unions are held hostage by a militant minority who force strikes even when the union’s own members do not support one. We can ill afford more strikes that crush growth, prevent workers from getting to work and endanger lives, and the public will not forget the change that this Government seek to make.

Amendment 61 is a Cross-Bench Lords amendment that would maintain a consensus arrived at by the Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding Committee—that only those who actively choose to contribute to a political fund opt in to do so. This is a basic principle that the Government have applied to services everywhere else in the economy, from beauty boxes, gyms and meditation apps to Netflix and newspaper subscriptions. Why should Britain’s workers not enjoy the same right? The only conceivable reason—it brings shame on anyone who votes against the amendment—is to swell the coffers of one political party.

Lords amendment 47, on the right to be accompanied, tries to finally level the playing field for the 80% of workers who are not in a union, but should have the same rights as trade union members to be supported in a disciplinary or grievance hearing. By voting against this modest but important reform, Labour is preserving what is essentially a closed shop that unions use to push people who do not want to join into doing so. We scrapped the closed shop decades ago, and no one should be bringing it back as a means of pressuring vulnerable workers into paying into union coffers.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith]

I will happily give way if the hon. Gentleman will talk about the other organisations that will do a brilliant job of representing employees.

[Gareth Snell]

Well, that wouldn’t be the Tory party, would it, Madam Deputy Speaker?

What the shadow Secretary of State seems not to understand is that workers cannot turn up to a trade union and go, “I’ve got a problem. Can I join and get representation, please?”. Almost every union in this country requires a qualifying period to get the representation he talks about—the idea that this is a closed shop is just nonsense.

[Andrew Griffith]

The hon. Member has probably wilfully misinterpreted what I said. I am talking about the right for individuals to be represented by a trade union or by a qualified professional from another domain, such as a qualified lawyer.

Business and the Economy

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

Once again, my hon. Friend has demonstrated his deep and real knowledge of business, having himself, in a past life, employed more than 1,000 people. One rather suspects that taking that risk, having that responsibility and shouldering that burden, moral and financial, is greater than the entire aggregate responsibility of Labour Members for hiring anyone. My hon. Friend has made the right point about who will end up on the receiving end of the higher unemployment. It will be the young, looking for their first opportunities, and it will be excluded and vulnerable groups on whom a benign employer would today take a chance—but not if that chance is likely to lead immediately to being at the back of an 18-month-long queue for an employment tribunal hearing.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The point made by the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) was about day one rights, but that right is to stop unfair dismissal from day one. Is it now the policy of the Conservative party to allow for unfair dismissal between the first and second days? If the shadow Minister is unhappy with that being a right from day one, presumably he is unhappy for people to have that right at all.

[Andrew Griffith]

I am afraid that to make those points is to misconstrue wilfully what is actually in the Bill. We have a very settled and balanced position of employment rights that dates back to before previous Labour Governments as well as the Government in office before the election. It strikes what will always be a difficult balance between offering employees the chance to enter the workforce and the ability of businesses, and of the public sector and others, to hire and to operate in a way that is profitable. It does nobody any favours to think that we can, merely by passing words of statute, change the outcomes in a way that advantages the most vulnerable, who are the youngest employees. The failure to learn from that point will once again lead to exactly the same outcome, which is why every Labour Government have left office with unemployment higher than where it started. In his response, the Minister may wish to confirm that this time will be different and perhaps lay out exactly why it will be different, but he has a job of work to convince us and, more importantly, every employer in the land that that is the case.

Technology in Public Services

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Gareth Snell

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to speak about exactly that subject later. However, it is critical and, I think, a point of commonality across the House that we can deliver change only through professional and competent civil servants, and it is important that the morale of the Secretary of State’s Department, like that of every other Whitehall Department, is maintained.

[Gareth Snell]

rose—

[Andrew Griffith]

I have finished making my points on this subject, and I am happy to move on in the interests of the debate.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about the morale of the civil service. Would he care to tell us how he thinks that was affected by a former Prime Minister’s referring to the civil service as “the blob”, and by Cabinet Ministers walking around their offices leaving passive-aggressive little notes asking, “Where are you?” It is very easy to make the snide comments that the hon. Gentleman is making, but it is not very relevant, is it?

[Andrew Griffith]

I accept that we have strayed some way from the important topic that the Secretary of State came here to talk about tonight. Much as I would enjoy continuing this discussion with the hon. Member, I am happy to move on and address more of the Secretary of State’s points.

It was the last Government who launched a wide-ranging public service productivity review to address these issues, and to understand for the first time how technology can transform our economy. It was the last Government—this was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans)—who decided to harness the potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare with the NHS AI lab and a £3.4 billion investment fund to cut admin and fast-track diagnoses. I was not 100% clear about this, and I do not want to wilfully misinterpret what was said by the Secretary of State, but I hope that the fund continues and we continue to see that opportunity.

The public have benefited directly from the sort of vast improvements that the Secretary of State talked about, thanks to the last Government’s embrace of technology. It now takes less than three weeks to receive a new passport—often much less—thanks to the adoption of cloud-based working practices. As of March this year, 99% of passport applications were processed within the target timeframe, a performance which, sadly, I do not think many other parts of Government achieve.

Some will have concerns about what the implementation of new technologies in the public sector will mean for those who work in it. If we are honest, we must recognise—and the Secretary of State well knows—that the business case for many new technologies has an impact on workers. The Secretary of State must filter out naysayers, even if they happen to be his party’s union paymasters. Whatever those paymasters say, disruptive technology is good for the public and vital to economic growth.