Clause 1 - Civil partnership
Civil Partnership Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Ms Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Industry and the Regions and Deputy Minister for Women), Department of Trade and Industry; Redditch, Labour)
Let us be quite clear. This legislation has been introduced primarily not to deal with inheritance tax issues, but as an equality measure because of the discrepancies between the situation of opposite-sex partners with the option to marry and the situation of same-sex couples with no option to marry or have any legal recognition of their relationship. Stemming from that legal invisibility comes a range of practical issues, some of which are appropriate to deal with in this legislation. I do not think, however, that that is the pre-eminent reason for the Bill.
We can and, I have no doubt, will discuss inheritance tax provisions, but I do not believe that this legislation or future Finance Bills should necessarily have as a top priority the reduction of inheritance tax, which at the moment impacts on only 5 per cent. of estates where someone has died. Given inheritance tax levels, two sisters would have to be living in a house worth well over £500,000 to come into the inheritance tax situation that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and I do not think that that is a priority—[Interruption.] No, because if two sisters are living in the house, one of them already owns half the house. If the other one in dying leaves their half as an inheritance, for that to meet the £263,000 threshold for inheritance tax the house in total would have to be worth more than £500,000.