Member

Therefore, I hope the Minister will be able to give me some assurance that this is an area that will need to be looked at because of the expansion of inheritance tax into pensions next year, when executors are going to struggle even more to extract funds to pay the tax at the right time to avoid those rather horrendous rates of 7.75% IHT. I am sorry to say that, given the state of the economy and the bond market and that it is 4% above base, it could go that little bit higher. In the media today, there is an expectation that interest rates will go up by two quarter points within the next six months. So you could have executors facing an 8.25% interest rate, which is not just high; it is truly damaging. I will leave the Minister with a bit to think about, and I look forward to his response.