Imagine the scene: a loved one - perhaps your parent or grandparent - has passed away. You’re grieving. At the same time, you’re trying to sort out all the things that follow a death. You’re going through their belongings and paperwork.
Then there’s a knock at the door. It’s not a well-wisher; it’s HMRC.
“Hello. We’ve come to value your relative’s estate.”
That is what Andy Burnham’s scheme could mean: the taxman intruding on the private grief of hundreds of thousands of ordinary families every year, right across the country.
It’s the tax that Andy Burnham conspicuously refused to rule out yesterday: a universal death tax. It’s a tax that he has been pushing for nigh on 20 years - in a white paper as health secretary in 2010, during his first leadership bid in 2015, at a fringe meeting in 2021 and in the Makerfield by-election, when everything was on the table.
And, as the Prime Minister says, “difficult decisions are coming”.
He has ruled out plenty of other taxes. But he won’t and he can’t rule out the death tax.
It’s a tax that the public has rejected not once, not twice, but four separate times. Yet Andy Burnham still seems to return to it. Why?
Not simply because he wants to change social care. If that were his sole aim, there would be other ways to fund it, such as cutting foreign aid or benefits for immigrants.
No one doubts that Andy Burnham possesses more charm than Keir Starmer. I know that’s a low bar. But have we stopped to ask: what is he actually selling?
I’m not surprised that Nigel Farage was the only party leader Andy Burnham wouldn’t invite to discuss his idea, despite the fact that Reform UK provides £8 billion of social care through the 30 councils that we run. That is because Andy Burnham knows - rightly, to be fair - that Nigel will never go along with a betrayal of people who have paid in their whole lives.
Andy Burnham says that difficult decisions lie ahead. But let’s be honest: that is Westminster politician-speak for “tax rises lie ahead”. Why not just be straight with people?
Let me tell you how a universal death tax would actually work and why this is a cruel and punitive tax.
Today, whatever its faults - and clearly inheritance tax has many - it at least has a threshold. That means that if you have saved a little over the years - hundreds of pounds, a few thousand pounds or, indeed, a larger amount, up to £325,000 as an individual - you can pass that on to your family.
Andy Burnham’s levy is different. It has no threshold, no allowance and no minimum limit whatsoever. Everything goes in: the family heirlooms, your mother’s wedding ring. If you have a watch to pass on and nothing else, it is taxed. A couple of pieces of jewellery? Taxed. Even clothes? Taxed.
Think what that means for the least well-off families in this country. An estate consisting of a few hundred pounds in a Post Office account, a bit of furniture, the sofa, the telly and a small policy would somehow have to be catalogued, valued and assessed.
By whom? Solicitors, probate valuers and officials - all people charging fees for the smallest estates. The cost of the assessment alone might swallow the inheritance whole. The state would spend £500 to take £300.
Brits are already among the most heavily taxed people on Earth when we die. Of the 38 OECD nations, Britain already runs the fifth-harshest death-tax regime. Nearly half of those countries do not tax children’s inheritance at all.
And who would actually pay it? It is not going to be the rich. The rich have family offices. They have offshore structures. They have accountants on retainers. They will have planned their way around this levy long before the bill has even reached its first reading in Parliament.
A flat tax with no floor does not catch the millionaires or the billionaires. It catches the widow in the bungalow. It catches the elderly pensioner with the savings book. The duke keeps his estate. The dinner lady loses hers. It is always the same: the clever money moves; the honest money pays.
Others will ask: how else do we pay for care? We all see the flaws in the present system. Nobody denies that. Nobody is blind to the problems. Nobody who has watched a parent pass through it could deny it.
I have - as an MP, as a grandson and, more recently, as a son.
Here are three better ways.
First, the system needs to talk to itself. Today, a hospital in one town can barely read the records of a care home in the next. Discharge notes are printed off. They are still faxed, for goodness’ sake - faxed in 2026 in some parts of the system.
Elderly patients are marooned in beds for weeks, costing thousands of pounds a week, because the NHS and the care system cannot pass a simple file between them.
One patient, one record - from ward to care home to GP. End the blocked beds and the botched discharges, and the savings run into billions.
Second, scrap the waste and spend the money on care.
Before this government takes a penny from a dead pensioner’s estate, it can take the billions we hand out every year in foreign aid.
How about stopping spending billions in benefits on those who have never paid in? Or the millions a day spent on hotels for Channel migrants? Or the quangos that nobody voted for, the consultants on £1,000 a day and the layers of NHS management that have never once emptied a bedpan?
This country does not lack money for care. It lacks a government with the courage and determination to put its own people first.
Thirdly - and here is one point on which Andy Burnham and I agree - pay care workers properly.
Care is skilled, demanding and often heartbreaking work, and today it is scandalously underpaid. But you cannot raise the wages of British care workers while importing a limitless supply of cheap labour to undercut them.
Eighty per cent of care workers are Brits. We should be on their side. End the undercutting of their wages. Pay carers a decent wage so that they can raise a family on it, and make it affordable for people to care for their own families.
Do that and you will discover that Britain does not have a shortage of carers. It has a shortage of respect for carers - and Reform UK will fix that.
We believe that money taxed when you earned it, taxed when you saved it and taxed when you spent it should not be taxed a fourth time when you are laid to rest.
We believe that a family’s home is a legacy. It is not a revenue stream.
We believe that the proper response of the British state to a death in someone’s family is sympathy, not a valuation - not a knock on the door from the taxman.
Andy Burnham may see this as his legacy, but your legacy is not his to take. It is your legacy, not his.
My message to Andy Burnham is this: rule out this tax. End the uncertainty. End the worry. Today.
If not, don’t ask Westminster. Ask the public. Call a general election.
Then there’s a knock at the door. It’s not a well-wisher; it’s HMRC.
“Hello. We’ve come to value your relative’s estate.”
That is what Andy Burnham’s scheme could mean: the taxman intruding on the private grief of hundreds of thousands of ordinary families every year, right across the country.
It’s the tax that Andy Burnham conspicuously refused to rule out yesterday: a universal death tax. It’s a tax that he has been pushing for nigh on 20 years - in a white paper as health secretary in 2010, during his first leadership bid in 2015, at a fringe meeting in 2021 and in the Makerfield by-election, when everything was on the table.
And, as the Prime Minister says, “difficult decisions are coming”.
He has ruled out plenty of other taxes. But he won’t and he can’t rule out the death tax.
It’s a tax that the public has rejected not once, not twice, but four separate times. Yet Andy Burnham still seems to return to it. Why?
Not simply because he wants to change social care. If that were his sole aim, there would be other ways to fund it, such as cutting foreign aid or benefits for immigrants.
No one doubts that Andy Burnham possesses more charm than Keir Starmer. I know that’s a low bar. But have we stopped to ask: what is he actually selling?
I’m not surprised that Nigel Farage was the only party leader Andy Burnham wouldn’t invite to discuss his idea, despite the fact that Reform UK provides £8 billion of social care through the 30 councils that we run. That is because Andy Burnham knows - rightly, to be fair - that Nigel will never go along with a betrayal of people who have paid in their whole lives.
Andy Burnham says that difficult decisions lie ahead. But let’s be honest: that is Westminster politician-speak for “tax rises lie ahead”. Why not just be straight with people?
Let me tell you how a universal death tax would actually work and why this is a cruel and punitive tax.
Today, whatever its faults - and clearly inheritance tax has many - it at least has a threshold. That means that if you have saved a little over the years - hundreds of pounds, a few thousand pounds or, indeed, a larger amount, up to £325,000 as an individual - you can pass that on to your family.
Andy Burnham’s levy is different. It has no threshold, no allowance and no minimum limit whatsoever. Everything goes in: the family heirlooms, your mother’s wedding ring. If you have a watch to pass on and nothing else, it is taxed. A couple of pieces of jewellery? Taxed. Even clothes? Taxed.
Think what that means for the least well-off families in this country. An estate consisting of a few hundred pounds in a Post Office account, a bit of furniture, the sofa, the telly and a small policy would somehow have to be catalogued, valued and assessed.
By whom? Solicitors, probate valuers and officials - all people charging fees for the smallest estates. The cost of the assessment alone might swallow the inheritance whole. The state would spend £500 to take £300.
Brits are already among the most heavily taxed people on Earth when we die. Of the 38 OECD nations, Britain already runs the fifth-harshest death-tax regime. Nearly half of those countries do not tax children’s inheritance at all.
And who would actually pay it? It is not going to be the rich. The rich have family offices. They have offshore structures. They have accountants on retainers. They will have planned their way around this levy long before the bill has even reached its first reading in Parliament.
A flat tax with no floor does not catch the millionaires or the billionaires. It catches the widow in the bungalow. It catches the elderly pensioner with the savings book. The duke keeps his estate. The dinner lady loses hers. It is always the same: the clever money moves; the honest money pays.
Others will ask: how else do we pay for care? We all see the flaws in the present system. Nobody denies that. Nobody is blind to the problems. Nobody who has watched a parent pass through it could deny it.
I have - as an MP, as a grandson and, more recently, as a son.
Here are three better ways.
First, the system needs to talk to itself. Today, a hospital in one town can barely read the records of a care home in the next. Discharge notes are printed off. They are still faxed, for goodness’ sake - faxed in 2026 in some parts of the system.
Elderly patients are marooned in beds for weeks, costing thousands of pounds a week, because the NHS and the care system cannot pass a simple file between them.
One patient, one record - from ward to care home to GP. End the blocked beds and the botched discharges, and the savings run into billions.
Second, scrap the waste and spend the money on care.
Before this government takes a penny from a dead pensioner’s estate, it can take the billions we hand out every year in foreign aid.
How about stopping spending billions in benefits on those who have never paid in? Or the millions a day spent on hotels for Channel migrants? Or the quangos that nobody voted for, the consultants on £1,000 a day and the layers of NHS management that have never once emptied a bedpan?
This country does not lack money for care. It lacks a government with the courage and determination to put its own people first.
Thirdly - and here is one point on which Andy Burnham and I agree - pay care workers properly.
Care is skilled, demanding and often heartbreaking work, and today it is scandalously underpaid. But you cannot raise the wages of British care workers while importing a limitless supply of cheap labour to undercut them.
Eighty per cent of care workers are Brits. We should be on their side. End the undercutting of their wages. Pay carers a decent wage so that they can raise a family on it, and make it affordable for people to care for their own families.
Do that and you will discover that Britain does not have a shortage of carers. It has a shortage of respect for carers - and Reform UK will fix that.
We believe that money taxed when you earned it, taxed when you saved it and taxed when you spent it should not be taxed a fourth time when you are laid to rest.
We believe that a family’s home is a legacy. It is not a revenue stream.
We believe that the proper response of the British state to a death in someone’s family is sympathy, not a valuation - not a knock on the door from the taxman.
Andy Burnham may see this as his legacy, but your legacy is not his to take. It is your legacy, not his.
My message to Andy Burnham is this: rule out this tax. End the uncertainty. End the worry. Today.
If not, don’t ask Westminster. Ask the public. Call a general election.
This is an edited version of a speech given by Robert Jenrick on 30th July. Watch the full press conference here.
