Inheritance Tax

Gareth Snell Excerpts

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?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Can I—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member is going to make a point of order, he might at least listen to the response. As he ought to know, as an experienced parliamentarian, that is not a matter for the Chair. He has, however, made his point.