Badenoch’s Inheritance Tax Pledge Meets Its Costed Critics
Fewer than 5% of families currently pay inheritance tax, and Kemi Badenoch says her plan would cut that number by more than half. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the biggest beneficiaries “would be those with the highest wealth and the most valuable homes”, mostly in London and the south-east. Reform says the plans touch only 2% of houses.
Those two percentages are not measuring the same thing — estates that pay the tax against the housing stock — and neither has been independently verified, so both are worth holding lightly. Stuart Adam of the Institute for Fiscal Studies is precise about who gains: “These will mostly be people living in London and the south-east.” Tax Justice UK calls it “a massive inheritance tax giveaway to some of the wealthiest people in Britain… a reckless policy that will deprive public services of cash when they most need them”. Robert Jenrick, Reform’s finance spokesman, attacks from the same direction for opposite reasons: “The Tory party is looking after its own in Kensington, Reform is looking after the country.” Labour’s chair Bridget Phillipson says the party is “prioritising the wealthiest instead”. The argument with the widest reach is not about fairness but about housing supply: exempting the family home whatever its value gives older owners a reason to stay in large houses rather than downsize, which is where the stock for everyone else comes from. Mrs Badenoch also ruled out any arrangement with Reform — “to those who say ‘unite the right’, we are not uniting with that” — and rejected Suella Braverman’s remarks on ethnicity and Englishness, saying she did not want to explain to her son “that some people don’t think our black players are English”.