In a Leader:

Asset ownership can only supplement benefits, not replace them. Mr Milburn highlighted the gross inequality between a child of a homeowner who in London can inherit £250,000 and a child in social housing who inherits nothing. But he failed to draw one obvious conclusion: urgent reform of inheritance tax.

Um, asset ownership can only supplement benefits, not replace them? Allright then, I’ll come back to the UK and live in the apartment I own. I’ll claim rent subsidy of course, as my ownership of that asset does not diminish my requirement for benefits now does it?
And this child of the home owner, child of the social housing renter thing. Social housing rents are lower than mortgage costs. That is, after all, the whole damn point. Over the years the parents of that child with nothing to inherit have in fact been getting a subsidy off the rest of us. Fine, no problem with that, good to help the poor. Those parents paying a mortgage have not been getting a subsidy and their child has also been deprived of the benefit, during childhood, of that extra cost that paying the mortgage imposes. Sorry about this but you can’t have the same money twice. You can have it in stages over 25 years as you don’t have to pay the full cost of your housing or you can have it at the end, as an asset after you’ve paid for it. Not both.
Inheritance tax? Reform? Of course, abolish it.