Finance Bill

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

That is in the interests of having some clarity as to when this should kick-in. The Government could do it now if they chose. They do not need primary legislation to do it, but the proposal for a review of inheritance tax is in the context of the Government now being five years behind the original projections made by the current Chancellor as to when we will be in surplus. We are giving the Chancellor a lot of latitude now. We hoped that there would not be draconian cuts, which are now being planned by the Government, to public spending and that we could, through adopting a growth strategy, get to a Budget surplus with no deficit earlier than 2019-20, but I fear we will not do so. So a review now is fine, but Labour Members are reasonable people and we are giving the Government lots of latitude. They ought to think again on this regressive tax, as on others.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

On the issue of inheritance tax, does my hon. Friend recognise that it is odd that the Government in this Budget and in the language of the legislation have moved to do away with any concept of child poverty? They are moving on work and family tax credits with very little discussion on their part about the impact on children. When they talk about inheritance tax changes, they use the word “children” a lot, but of course the children they are talking about there are people who are well-off.

[Rob Marris]

My hon. Friend is quite right. If I may be so bold, in this context, the word “child” means people of around my age and that of my hon. Friend rather than minors. I wish the Government had paid a little more attention to minors and to child poverty. One of the achievements of the Labour Government was that child poverty fell significantly while we were in office. I regret, however, that that Labour Government, under Gordon Brown, cut inheritance tax by introducing the doubler—the Minister referred to this in Committee—whereby the £325,000 personal allowance could be utilised by the surviving spouse if the first spouse to die had not used that allowance. I expressed my regret about that at the time. At that point, when the threshold was around £300,000, only 6% of estates in England paid inheritance tax. Then the threshold was raised to £325,000, and then the doubling up came in. That was regressive and regrettable, but so be it: that is the regime that the coalition Government inherited.