PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 867
find out deaths ? It would be with very considerable difficulty. That, I find, is one lacuna in this Bill.
The second thing that I found in this Bill is this. The hon. member has provided in clause 17 of the Bill as to who should pay the estate duty. If the interest of the deceased is in a controlled company, then somebody representing the controlled company shall pay; if it is others, then, some other persons may pay. All the same, the question remains : how is a Controller to know that the deceased person had a share in the controlled company or that the deceased person had other property ? I should think that this Bill should have a clause like the one that I am suggesting, requiring every successor, whether the deceased left a will or not, to go to the Court and to make a declaration of the property left if there is no will, so that the Controller would know from the declaration that so much property has been left. He can then proceed to find out whether there had been any concealment of the property that the deceased had left. Otherwise it would be a sort of a roving enquiry that the Controller will have to make in order to find out what is the exact amount of property. In the present circumstances in which we exist and in which we find so much corruption, I am very greatly doubtful whether a law of this kind leaving the matter entirely in the hands of the Controller would not result in much more corruption than what exists today. These are the two things which, I find, require to be rectified so that the law which is bound to cause harshness—and every law causes harshness—does not cause unnecessary harassment to the people who are to pay this duty.
The second question to which I wish to draw the attention of the house is the question of the amount that is likely to be realised by this estate duty. I have been following the speeches of the hon. Member, which he has made on various occasions with regard to the Estate Duty Bill and I find that he has been very cautious not to commit himself to any particular figure. I think last time when he introduced the Bill in 1952 he said to the House that he was quite unable to even make a guess of what was likely to be the yield of this tax. Well, I think that with regard to a measure of this