The living daylights

THE NAME'S PRIMAROLO Dawn Primarolo. The Paymaster General announced increases in the inheritance tax thresholds and the news that about 37 000 estates would pay tax in 2006-07. This prompted Mrs Theresa Villiers to note that house prices had risen by 154% since May 1997 while inheritance tax thresholds had only gone up by 54% bringing more people into the tax 'net'. Apparently according to the Paymaster General there is one thing worse than paying tax and this is when 'some Members frighten the living daylights out of citizens by misrepresenting the facts and encouraging citizens to believe incorrectly that they are in a particular tax net'.

Conservative members of Standing Committee A responded that to have kept pace with house price inflation the threshold would now need to be £425 000 and that 'fiscal drag is pulling much of middle Britain into...