Sir – Visiting Scotland during the referendum I was reminded that the great landed estates there, as elsewhere in the UK,  need splitting up or their ownership shared more widely in each new generation.

 

The traditional preamble to the Liberal Party’s Constitution calls for liberty, property and security for all (See www.liberal.org.uk). These days the Liberal Party calls for a UK iniversal inheritance for all 25-year-old, UK-born UK citizens.

 

It would be financed by a flat tax on giving and bequeathing capital together with a progressive tax on cumulative lifetime receipt of capital gifts and inheritance, including currently exempt agricultural and business assets as well as the universal inheritance itself, thereby clawing it back from the more fortunate.

 

Whatever constitutional arrangements follow the Scottish referendum, UK universal inheritance should be available throughout the UK, including to 25-year-old, UK-born UK citizens of Glasgow, for example, out of the past of our great country. Start at £1,000 and increase it by that amount annually to £10,000 or more, thereby incidentally helping student loan repayments.

 

Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens say nothing about the positive redistribution of the ownership of capital in each new generation in a genuine opportunity society.

 

Conservatives would irresponsibly reduce inheritance tax. UKIP would even abolish it. Only the (EU-sceptic) Liberal Party has the asset welfare state policy to make capitalism work for all in the UK, thereby showing the way for other countries to follow, as it did in the past with the income welfare state. 

 

Dane Clouston, Stadhampton