Daily Mail columnist John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, attacks new Prime Minister Andy Burnham for floating a "national care service" alongside a flat 10 per cent inheritance tax on all estates to fund it, a policy Burnham previously proposed as health secretary in the 2000s. O'Connell argues this would be far more damaging and unpopular than Rachel Reeves' 2024 Budget changes to farm inheritance tax relief, warning it would strip ordinary families of the ability to pass on modest savings and provoke intense public backlash.

The piece notes the care service concept was announced with little detail but was likened to a "sister service" to the NHS, an idea the Health Foundation think-tank has previously costed at an extra £18.7billion a year. O'Connell cites TaxPayers' Alliance polling suggesting most demographic groups support cutting or scrapping inheritance tax (bar those with PhDs, he claims), quotes Reform UK's Richard Tice calling it "an awful grief tax", and points out the current tax-free threshold of £325,000 (£500,000 for a main home left to children) has been frozen since 2009. He concludes the plan is uncosted and warns it risks repeating the NHS's perceived failures on a national scale.