Cutting inheritance tax is 'morally right', Badenoch says as Tory conference opens

Kemi Badenoch has suggested cutting inheritance tax would be “morally right”, as the Conservatives opened their annual party conference in Birmingham with a raft of new policy pledges PA Media.

The Tory leader told the Sunday Times she was open to changes to the levy, paid on most estates worth more than £325,000 — but only if it were fiscally responsible The Sunday Times. Asked whether she planned to abolish the tax, she said: “It is morally right that people don’t get taxed twice. It is morally right that if you work hard and want to give something to your children the Government doesn’t take it away.”

“I am not going to announce tax cuts unless we can show how we pay for them… tax cuts are a good thing but you’ve got to be fiscally responsible,” she added, declining to confirm any policy change. The intervention raises hopes within her party that she may promise to slash or abolish the tax in her conference speech on Wednesday.

The party has pledged to end a childcare “cliff edge” that means parents earning more than £100,000 do not qualify for the entitlement. All parents working 16 or more hours a week would be eligible for 30 hours of free care a week, at an estimated cost of £700 million a year funded by cutting staff at arms-length bodies. “What we want to see is that people who work harder don’t get punished for doing so,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

The Conservatives also announced plans to tighten access to student loans for non-UK nationals, which they say would save taxpayers £900 million a year, and to block EU Settled Status claims, a system the party said is being “abused”. Badenoch arrived at the conference on Saturday afternoon, her second as Conservative leader.