I want to say something very briefly about death duties because this was a great plank in the Coalition's election manifesto. It is proposed to reduce death duties by £0.7 million. That is the net relief this year. The total amount collected last year was £11 million so there is a reduction of approximately 6 per cent in death duties. The so-called reduction in death duties, whether people have realised it or not, is negligible. While there has been some very limited reduction in some aspects of death duties and some parts of estate duty there has been the most appalling increase in two very important parts of death duties, in legacy duty and in succession duty. I thought the time had come when we could begin to think of getting rid of legacy duty and succession duty because these are paid on top of estate duty.
The fair, reasonable and equitable thing to do—this has been done in other countries—would be to get rid of them but today we find the Minister for Finance proposing to double these duties. If a farmer leaves his farm to his brother, sister or nephew instead of that person getting the relief which was so generously promised him before the last election he will, in fact, be paying substantially more in death duties. This should be brought home to the people as quickly as possible because the relief in death duties as a whole is negligible and there is a most vicious and brutal increase in a very important part of them.
It must be a long time since the rate of death duties in any particular category was doubled in this country. I doubt if it ever happened before. Today, we have had a most vicious increase and the sooner the better the farmers and other people in the country who own property, which has gone up so much in value in the last few years, realise that not alone are they getting no relief whatever as a result of this budget but a lot of them will be paying very substantially more in death duties. We have to oppose very vehemently Financial Resolution No. 6.
I have not time to deal with the other matters but there are appallingly heavy increases in motor taxation and driving licence fees which will have a most crippling effect on private individuals of all classes throughout the country and, above all, they will have a most crippling effect on business and will put up costs and make the inflationary spiral an even greater one than it is.
