Inheritance Tax

Gavin Williamson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

While I am following a vast number of extraordinarily excellent speeches from Opposition Members, unfortunately I am going to have to start with some of the really quite stunning comments from Government Members—comments that clearly demonstrate that the Government have absolutely no clue about what creates wealth in this country, what drives growth in our economy, and what real people who are working hard have to face in Britain every single day. There was no greater example of this than the comments of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), who I notice has just scuttled out of the Chamber. He had the audacity to misquote Churchill and to call the people who are working hard in this country—the people who are grafting hard—the “idle rich”. What a disgraceful thing to say to those people who are building a business! What a disgraceful thing to say to the farmers who are up at the crack of dawn trying to make their businesses work! He should come back to the Chamber and apologise to them, because they deserve an apology.

I prefer another Churchill quote. He said:

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy”,

and we have seen a lot of failure, ignorance and envy from Government Members today. The real people who are going to be hit by these taxes are not the idle rich who the hon. Member for Macclesfield mentioned; they are the grafters who put in—people like my father’s family, who ran a business for over a century in Hazlemere. They worked hard, took risks, saved, and stood on their own two feet. These are the sort of people who this Labour Government have decided they want to tax to the hilt—to tax out of existence.

For decades, business property relief meant that a family firm could pass to the next generation without a bill. This Government ended that. Relief was capped at £1 million in 2024. Only after a backlash did it rise to £2.5 million of combined business and agricultural property relief. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) said, though, businesses are not a bank account. Cash and capital are two different things. A business’s value is in its premises, its machinery, its stock and its good will, not necessarily in its cash, so the people who inherit it must find money from the very businesses that employ their staff and extend growth.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend fear, like I do, that we will see so many more family firms being sold, and often sold to foreign buyers—people who have no interest in investing for the long term and investing in local communities?

[Gregory Stafford]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In my constituency—and, I am sure, in his constituency and across the country—small family businesses are having to make really tough decisions about what they are going to do. He is right that they will often go to foreign firms, because those firms will not be hit by this level of taxes. Hitting British businesses so that they will be sold to foreign ones is an odd focus for this Labour Government. It is extraordinary, and if the Government do not see that, they really must think again.

Think of an owner in their 60s deciding whether to buy a new machine or take on another apprentice. Now they must first ask, “What will this do to my tax bill that my children will inherit?”—a tax that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) said, makes owners think twice before investing and building growth.