Appendices
Welcome to the website of the Campaign for Universal Inheritance.
Universal Inheritance is a practical self-financing policy proposal that will bring about greater equality of opportunity, more entrepreneurial activity and home ownership, more social mobility, less financial and social exclusion, less poverty, less welfare state income needism, the wider spread of the private ownership of wealth (without discouraging the creation of wealth) and a greater sense of national community and identity.
The British Universal Inheritance proposal is a flat rate 10 % Capital Gifts, Bequests and Estates Tax in combination with a negative (£10,000 receipt at 25 for all UK-born citizens) and progressive (starting at 10 %) cumulative lifetime Capital Receipts Tax, with transferable tax credits between the two.
British Universal Inheritance is a big meritocratic idea, comparable with the Thatcherite sale of council houses. It will transform this country and in due course the world. It could be introduced by either of the two major parties.
It is already a progressive nationalist policy of the original and continuing Liberal Party. (NOT the EU-fanatic Lib Dems, whose idea of redistribution of wealth is a few pence on income tax and whose preference would in any case no doubt be for EU rather than British Universal Inheritance). Universal Inheritance is a way of raising the absolute levels of wealth in a national community while reducing the relative gap between rich and poor.
There is an article on British Universal Inheritance in the Vol 13 No 4 2005 issue of Renewal - The Journal of Labour politics. See 'Archive' on the website http://www.renewal.org.uk. At the same time it is difficult to see how the Conservative Party can honour a pledge, recently reported in The Daily Telegraph, that 'we will redistribute wealth' and 'empower people' without this proposal, which has already, before the last General Election, been 'identified for inclusion and discussion in the Conservative Party Review of Inheritance Tax'.
"Meritocracy has a lot to do with equal opportunity. I stood as a Liberal in Newbury back in 1974 - on a platform of greater equality of opportunity in education, health and the inheritance of wealth. Redistribution of wealth, as distinct from income, has been ignored [by the Left], and ought to be addressed."
BBC Radio 4 "What is Right?" programme - May 2006
"I would like to go back to the Conservative Party response to the need for change - and relate it to inequalities of wealth. As Director of OPPORTUNITY - The Campaign for British Universal Inheritance, I treasure this copy of the Daily Telegraph (December 23rd 2005), with its front page headline "Letwin: We will redistribute wealth" and "empower people". The Right are sometimes surprisingly good at redistributing wealth - after all, they sold off the Council houses. I hope that the next big meritocratic idea from the Right will be a reformed negative and progressive inheritance tax to give every young British-born citizen at 25 a significant chunk of capital, regardless of the circumstances, savings skills or investment skills of their parents".
THE CAMPAIGN FOR UNIVERSAL INHERITANCE
and
OPPORTUNITY - THE CAMPAIGN FOR BRITISH UNIVERSAL INHERITANCE
PO Box 1148 Oxford OX44 7AT