§ Mr. MartlewTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 22 June,Official Report, column 2, what was the cost to the Exchequer of the exemption from inheritance tax and capital transfer tax given to six landowners in Cumbria who agreed to maintain and preserve their property and provide reasonable public access to it for each year since the exemptions were granted.
§ Mr. Dorrell[holding answer 26 June 1992]: Estimates of the cost of conditionally exempting land and buildings were given for the whole United Kingdom in my reply to the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) on 2 June at column 399. These figures represented a broad judgment of the likely overall cost of the exemption and were subject to a large margin of error.
Where exemption is given, it is not necessary to establish the value of individual properties, and so it is not possible to give equivalent estimates for the cost of exempting the small number of properties involved in Cumbria.
In addition, the normal rules of confidentiality would prevent the disclosure of annual estimates for Cumbria, since these would enable the tax position of particular taxpayers to be identified.