Watch our webcam interview on the Tory tax debate between Daniel Finkelstein and Stephen Pollard

The impression we got from the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, today was that while he gave a general welcome to the idea of tax cuts, he steered very clearly away from endorsing the specific proposal to abolition inheritance tax.

In fact the story of the morning, if you like, was the four or five times that Mr Osborne stressed that the Conservatives will not be offering an overall reduction in tax at the next general election — a very different message to the one in John Redwood's report.

Specifically on inheritance tax, Mr Osborne said that he would look at the threshold, which is currently at £300,000. The Government has already said that it plans to increase this to £350,000 by 2010 so we could see a bidding war, with the Conservatives going higher and the Government going higher after that.

He also said he would look at the rate, which is currently at 40 per cent. There is no reason for the Tories not to reduce that to, say, 30 per cent.

But as for complete abolition, Mr Osborne did not give the impression of being completely sold on the idea.

One disadvantage to the proposal is that it would look like a tax cut for the super rich. The people you help by raising the threshold are people whose main family home is worth around £300,000. That's not the same as scrapping the tax altogether and handing a massive tax cut to the families of multi-millionaires.

I think you'll find that Mr Osborne looks at Mr Redwood's inheritance tax plan, takes what he likes and modifies it rather than accepts it wholesale.

It's very much in the spirit of these policy groups to get the best brains on the subject, come up with lots of policy ideas and then pick and choose what you think will work.

But there is a drawback to this process for the Conservative party in that it can send out mixed messages.

In a couple of weeks time, for instance, we are expecting the policy group on the environment and that is expected to contain a raft of new taxes — levies on 4x4s, taxes on air travel — in a completely different spirit to Mr Redwood's report.

The danger is that you get mixed headlines and people feeling let down or accusing you of pulling back from policy proposals which you've never agreed to. Tomorrow, for example, there might be headlines saying "Inheritance tax would be abolished by the Tories" whereas we know from Mr Osborne already that that's not going to happen.

Mr Redwood's policy report was always going to be published in August but there is no doubt that the leadership gave it a big boost in the hope of securing some positive coverage and striking back at Gordon Brown, who has had such a strong start. I think they will feel that they have done quite well.

But part of Mr Osborne's reluctance today might be explained by the volatility in the markets this week. The Shadow Chancellor was being watched by people in the City today and the last message he wanted to convey was of a Chancellor who would back unfunded tax cuts.

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