Damian Hinds

It will, and I repeat that it can only be one of those three groups. There will be some price increases, and those costs will be felt by customers and consumers, but all the indications are that the big effects will be felt in wage suppression and in employment, which will ultimately mean slower economic growth. In the same way that taxes on business ultimately land on people, taxes that look like they are on people can sometimes have an effect on business. I want to talk briefly about two examples. The first is the family farm tax. This is clearly a desperately ill-conceived measure, although, to be fair to Labour Ministers, they probably did not realise at the time quite what they were doing. However, their Members of Parliament representing rural seats found out very quickly exactly what they were doing and the effect it would have. There is an alternative proposal on the table, which we know has been put to the Treasury by representatives of the sector. As this brilliant Treasury Minister the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell) will be winding up, I am sure—at least I hope—he will find it possible to share with the House the Treasury’s critique of that alternative proposal, the so-called clawback proposal, which would be much fairer, and tell us why the Government are rejecting it. There has been quite a lot of debate in the House on the family farm tax, but somewhat less on the business property relief situation, which is not quite as acute in some ways, but there are a number of parallels and similarities. Business property relief was put in place to level the playing field for family-owned businesses and others, so that people could invest in their family-owned businesses, confident that they could pass it on, within the family, without incurring a tax that applies to no other business ownership model. Typically, these businesses will not have large amounts of net cash or liquid assets that will allow them to settle the tax bill upon the demise of the owner, and there are no listed shares, so there is typically no market for those. There has to be a theoretical valuation, because the shares cannot be valued, and that figure is likely to be considerably higher than the amount that could be realised in the event of a sale. The relief was created specifically to stop family firms having to be broken up; however, the net effect of the changes is that a substantial number of firms in this situation will be bought up, either in whole or in part, by foreign owners or private equity. Is that really what a new Labour Government had in mind?