I’d like inheritance tax to be abolished, says UK Treasury minister
A Conservative Treasury minister and one of Liz Truss’s major campaign donors said they would like to abolish inheritance tax, as they urged her to continue with her “politically brave” agenda for wealth creation.
Andrew Griffith, a City minister under Kwasi Kwarteng, said tax was not his policy area but inheritance tax would be his top choice for a tax to abolish.
Michael Spencer, a Tory peer and City financier who gave £25,0000 to Truss’s leadership campaign, also backed abolishing inheritance tax, saying it was causing wealthy people to move abroad as non-doms, and scrapping tax on share trading.
Speaking at a Centre for Policy Studies event at the Conservative party conference, Griffith said: “I shouldn’t talk about tax policy. It’s outside my lane even within the Treasury. But I have lots of my fantastic local association with me here and they will know because they asked me at my selection meeting 27 months ago which tax, if I had the choice, I would most like to see eliminated. History will record it was the inheritance tax,” he told a fringe meeting.
Their interventions came on the Conservatives’ business day, where executives and lobbyists pay almost £3,000 for access to ministers. Around 25 ministers were put up by the party for “roundtable” sessions where businesses could have direct access to those in charge of departments.
Griffith, a former executive at Sky, who attended the business day, gave a defence of the government’s agenda at an event on financial services.
“I celebrate wealth creating and risk taking,” he told the CPS event. “We’ve got to drive that into the system. It can’t be right that the only time a businessman is ever on the BBC is that they’re greedy, underpaying their staff or exploiting
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