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Letter to the editor Dear Today Team, So the Conservatives are going to make ours a fairer country! (with copy to David Cameron, George Osborne, Oliver Letwin, David Willetts and blind copy to Supporters of the Campaign for British Universal Inheritance) So the Conservatives are going to make ours a fairer country! How? By raising the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1,000,000! That will only serve to make ours a more unequal and so less fair country in each new generation! An “aspirational measure” says George Osborne, on your programme today! Aspiration is a strong desire for high achievement, for something above one. To have a fairer country there has to be not only aspiration but also (greater) equality of opportunity. Who does not aspire to accumulate assets of more than £1,000,000, whatever the rate of inheritance tax? George Osborne does also call for “equality of opportunity”. But where is the equality of opportunity between someone who inherits £1,000,000 and someone who inherits nothing? “It is no good throwing money at people” says George Osborne. Tell that to the heirs of the £1,000,000, or of hundreds or thousands of millions! Tell that to those who will inherit nothing! If the Conservatives mean what they say about making ours a fairer country they will have to go back to what Oliver Letwin said in 2005, as reported in the front page headline of the Daily Telegraph on 23rd December that year. “Letwin: we will redistribute wealth” and “empower people”. The only practical way of redistributing wealth - as opposed to income - is to do so at the point of transfer from each generation to the next. If the Conservative Party really is going to make ours a fairer country, they will have to absorb Gordon Brown's misconceived Baby Bonds and Child Trust Funds into a radical reform of Inheritance Tax. Every young British-born British citizen should receive at the age of 25 at least a basic minimum British Universal Inheritance, regardless of parental or family fortunes, generosity, savings or investment skills, of 10 per cent of average national wealth, financed by (and subject to) progressive taxation, starting at 10 per cent, on cumulative lifetime receipt of all capital gifts and inheritance - without all the current asset- and gift-linked IHT exemptions for wealthy givers. Then we will know that the Conservatives really are genuinely concerned to bring about a fairer country, with both aspiration and equality of opportunity for all, instead of just pretending - either blindly or cynically - to be so. Best wishes DANE CLOUSTON OPPORTUNITY - The Campaign for British Universal Inheritance
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