(1 month, 1 week ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered rural affairs.
I am delighted that the House has this opportunity to discuss the impact of the Budget on rural communities. Let me begin by addressing what the Budget means for farming in the round. We can all agree that food security is national security, which is why we have secured the biggest budget in our country’s history for sustainable food production and nature’s recovery. It commits £5 billion to the agricultural budget over the next two years. We are continuing all the environmental land management schemes, and investing £1.8 billion into them from 2025-26, which gives farmers the stability they need and lays the foundations for sustainable food production, to protect farmers and the environment for years to come.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman made of the impact on capital investment, which will be reduced as farmers consider the inheritance tax implications of those investments and adjust their plans accordingly?
Steve Reed
The changes have been signed off by the Office for Budget Responsibility and the full impact assessment will be available when the Finance Bill is published, before they come into force in 2026.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State understand that a farmer coming towards the end of his career is hardly likely to invest either in improving his land or in the hundreds of thousands of pounds that a piece of agricultural plant costs these days, knowing that there will be a surcharge when, sadly, he deceases?
Steve Reed
The vast majority of farmers will be unaffected by the changes, so that point will not apply.
We are also rapidly releasing £60 million to support farmers whose farms have been devastated by severe flooding. That is £10 million more than the previous Government were offering and, unlike their fantasy figures, we have shown where the money to be paid out will come from. Flooding is just one of the many challenges that farmers have faced over the past year.
Simon Hoare
The Secretary of State has painted the most rosy picture. Why does he think that no one in the farming community can see it or share it?
Steve Reed
I have not had time to paint much of a rosy picture yet, because I have only just started and I am taking quite a lot of interventions, but I hope I can allay the concerns of some farmers in the comments that I hope to make during my speech.
Sir Roger Gale
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the amount of money being made available for flooding. The devastation caused by flooding pales into insignificance compared with the damage that will be done by inheritance tax. This weekend a farmer in my constituency has cancelled the building of a new barn because of it. Park home owners in my area are in despair as a result of what the Budget is doing to them. Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that?
Steve Reed
The vast majority of farmers will not be affected by the changes to inheritance tax, and I implore the right hon. Gentleman not to underplay the damage caused by flooding. Many farms were absolutely devastated last year, and it will be immensely welcome that we have released £60 million to help farmers to deal with that problem, as well as setting up a flood resilience taskforce to ensure far better co-ordination between the centre and the agencies on the ground, to protect farmers from the devastation of flooding in years to come.
Steve Reed
I said that I had taken my last intervention, but since it is the hon. Gentleman I am happy to give way.
Jim Shannon
I have been inundated with messages from farmers back home. I am a member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, so I understand the issues clearly. The National Farmers Union here on the mainland has the same point of view. Every one of my neighbours will be impacted, and the Ulster Farmers’ Union estimates that almost every farmer in Northern Ireland will be impacted by the inheritance tax changes. Is the Secretary of State prepared to meet Ulster Farmers’ Union representatives to discuss this matter and understand much better—I say that respectfully—the issue of inheritance tax and what it means to family farms in Northern Ireland? It will destroy them.
Steve Reed
It is very important that we all listen to farmers and farmers’ representatives. Either I, or one of my ministerial colleagues, will make sure that we meet the representatives the hon. Gentleman mentions. I hope that I can allay some of those concerns if I am able to continue my speech, in which I will directly address the issues to which he referred.
As I was saying, flooding is just one of the many challenges that farmers have faced over the last past year. In recent weeks I have met farmers who have been hit by bluetongue in their herds, and I am sorry to say that we have the first recorded case of avian influenza this autumn. Biosecurity threats are real and their impacts even more so, which is why we are investing over £200 million to protect the nation from potential disease outbreaks, including by fixing the defences at our world-leading Weybridge facility that the Conservatives left to fall into disrepair.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
I commend the Secretary of State’s broad approach. In my constituency there is a serious issue with precious flood plains being speculatively bought by developers, which is causing a huge amount of concern to local residents. It is also an issue in terms of the potential threat to wildlife habitats and of the impact on flooding. Will the Secretary of State consider meeting me and local residents to discuss this important matter?
Steve Reed
My hon. Friend is a great champion for his community. I am of course more than happy to meet him and people from his community to discuss those important issues.
The measures in the Budget will enable us to build a stronger, more sustainable future for British agriculture and put in place our new deal for farmers, which includes making the supply chain fairer so that producers are no longer forced to sell their food below the price of production; speeding up planning decisions to help farmers to diversify into new forms of income; seeking a new veterinary agreement—
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Steve Reed
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I want to make a little progress.
The new deal for farmers includes seeking a new veterinary agreement with the EU to tear down the export barriers that the previous Government erected in the first place; backing British produce by using the Government’s purchasing power to buy British; and protecting our farmers from ever again being undercut by low welfare and low standards in trade deals like the disastrous one the previous Government signed with Australia and New Zealand.
The House is aware that the Government inherited a catastrophic £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances, meaning we have had to take tough decisions on tax, welfare and spending to protect the payslips of working people. This has required reforms to agricultural property relief. I recognise that many farmers are feeling anxious about the changes; I urge them not to believe every alarming claim or headline and I reassure them that the Government are listening to them. We are committed to ensuring the future of family farms. The vast majority of farmers will not be affected at all by the changes. Let us look at the detail.
Steve Reed
If the hon. Gentleman will give me a little time, it is important that I make these points.
Currently, 73% of agricultural property relief claims are less than £1 million. An individual farm owner can pass on up to £1.5 million and a couple can pass on up to £3 million between them to a direct descendant, free of inheritance tax. If a couple who own a farm want to pass it on to a younger relative and one partner predeceases the other, each of them has a £1 million APR threshold that they can pass on. Add those together and that is £2 million, plus the £1 million that a couple with a property can pass on to their children. For most people, that is an effective threshold of up to £3 million to pass on without incurring inheritance tax. Any liability beyond that will be charged at only half the standard inheritance tax rate and payment can be phased over 10 years to make it more affordable. Farmers will be able to pass down their family farm to future generations, just as they always have done.
Harriet Cross
Will the Secretary of State tell us where he obtained those figures?
Steve Reed
They are from the Treasury and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Under the previous system, 40% of the value of agricultural property relief went to just 7% of claimants. That is not fair and it is not sustainable. Our reforms will put a stop to wealthy individuals buying up agricultural land to avoid inheritance tax and, in the process of doing that, pricing younger farmers out of buying land for themselves and for their families. As a Farmers Weekly correspondent pointed out,
“prices have been artificially inflated by non-agricultural buyers purchasing land for inheritance tax purposes”,
thereby making it hard for young farmers to set up a family farm. That is correct.
The reforms will protect family farms by closing the loopholes, but they will also help to provide funding for the public services on which families in rural and farming communities rely just as much as anyone else. When Opposition Members say that they would go back to the unfair old system, they also need to tell us which part of the new NHS investment they would cut to pay for it. Like everyone else, farmers and rural communities need a better NHS, affordable housing, good local schools and reliable public transport.
The last Government’s economic failure left Britain with a flatlining economy, broken public services and the worst decade for wage growth since the great depression of the 1930s. Poor public transport meant that people could not get to work, the GP or the hospital when they needed to. Home ownership was out of reach for too many in rural areas. Too few new homes were built, and even fewer that were genuinely affordable. Digital connectivity in rural areas lags behind connectivity in urban areas.
We have to kick-start the economy to build the public services that rural communities need, and to help with that we have secured the biggest budget for sustainable farming and nature in our country’s history. It will help to change farming practices so that we can clean up our rivers, lakes and seas, which the last Government left in such a filthy, polluted state.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)
The Secretary of State mentioned the new set-up for the funding of agriculture and fisheries across the UK. He may be aware of the concern expressed by the Farmers’ Union of Wales, which fears that processing the extra funds through the Barnett formula—as opposed to the previous arrangement, which was a ringfenced addition for the devolved Governments—might bring about a severe reduction in agricultural funding in Wales. Will the Secretary of State please give some reassurance that that is not the case?
Steve Reed
As I have said, the consequentials will work in the way in which they always work. Devolved Administrations have some discretion as to how they will spend the money that is made available to them, but of course I, along with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, am more than happy to engage with, for instance, the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to discuss those points.
The huge investment we have secured in the sustainable farming budget will also help us to move to a zero-waste economy, as we end the throwaway society and reuse materials rather than sending them to landfill.
Steve Reed
No. The hon. Gentleman has already had his chance to ask a question.
The investment will help us to boost food production as we move to models of farming that are not only more environmentally sustainable but more financially sustainable, and it will help nature to recover—here, in what has become one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth, with nearly half our bird species and a quarter of our mammal species now at risk of extinction.
Our plans to upgrade our crumbling water infrastructure will help to bring in tens of billions of pounds of private investment, and will create tens of thousands of well-paid jobs in rural communities throughout the country. We will reform the planning system to build the affordable homes that our rural communities so desperately need, while also protecting our green spaces and precious natural environments. We are investing £2.4 billion over the next two years in the flood defences that the last Government left in such an unacceptable state of decay and disrepair.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way on the issue of flooding. Anyone would welcome more money, which is desperately needed, but will he comment on the flooding formula? Many inland communities flood, but the Environment Agency continues to say that there is nothing it can do, because the flooding formula says it is not worth doing anything. Frequent flooding of smaller communities matters, too. Is the Department looking at that?
Steve Reed
We are looking at that, and we will be able to make proposals in due course. I know that the hon. Lady will be interested in taking part in a conversation about them when we do.
I am talking about the changes we are making more widely for rural communities. We will open new specialist colleges and reform the apprenticeships levy to help agricultural businesses and farms to upskill their workforce, and we will recruit 8,500 more mental health professionals across the NHS, with a mental health hub in every community to tackle the scourge of mental ill health in our farming and rural communities.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I welcome what the right hon. Gentleman is saying about mental health, but may I take him back to what he said about the Environment Agency? There is concern about the arbitration over whether Natural England or the Environment Agency has authority. South of Salisbury, in the Avon valley, there is a massive issue. The Environment Agency has done a great deal of work, but there is always a concern that Natural England will come in and overrule it. The arbitration over who is sovereign in such circumstances is a massive issue across the country, and I would be grateful if he could turn his attention to it.
Steve Reed
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I have appointed Dan Corry to lead a review of regulation across the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, precisely so that we can iron out such anomalies.
I am keen to ensure that we crack down on antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and GPS theft through the first ever cross-Government rural crime strategy, and we will improve public transport by allowing authorities to take back control of their buses to meet the needs of their communities.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State mentions rural crime, and I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge. In the last Parliament, with Labour’s support, my private Member’s Bill got Royal Assent. It just needs a statutory instrument to be laid before the House to bring in the definition of “forensic marking”, which the police say will be a big power for them in combating rural crime. Will he talk to the Home Secretary to ensure that my Act starts to help him to deliver his rural crime strategy?
Steve Reed
I will convey the hon. Gentleman’s views to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Steve Reed
If the right hon. Lady will forgive me, I will conclude my speech, because I have taken an awful lot of time and Members will want to have their say.
Rural communities are at the heart of this Government’s No. 1 mission: to grow the economy. Everyone, regardless of where they grow up, should have the same opportunities to succeed in life. We have had to take tough decisions to fix the broken foundations of our economy, but they are part of a Budget that will restore economic stability and begin a decade of national renewal for everyone, everywhere. I welcome this opportunity to set out the facts and figures, and to show why this Budget offers a better future for our rural and farming communities, as we fix the foundations and rebuild Britain.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for holding this important debate, and for welcoming me to my new role. From the arable fields outside my front door to the cattle and horticulture that stretch from the fens, the wolds and the marshes to the coast, my constituency feeds the country. I am delighted and determined to bring some of my county’s common sense and love of the countryside to this important portfolio. On Armistice Day, I pay tribute to the fallen, and particularly to the farmers who stayed behind to feed the nation in wars gone by.
This is a critical time for our rural way of life. After years of unforgiving weather, rising commodity prices and more crop and livestock diseases, our farmers now face a new threat: a city-dwelling, socialist Government who do not understand or care for the rural way of life. The evidence is there in Labour’s first Budget, for which it had 14 years to prepare. [Interruption.] The Back Bencher who is waving his arms around may want to listen to this. In this Budget of broken promises, the Chancellor laid careful plans to break the farming sector, the wider rural economy and our food security. Farmers look after 70% of the UK’s land. They are the keystone of our rural communities. When they struggle, our rural economy is weakened and our food security is put at risk.
Today, as the consequences of this Budget are becoming clearer, I will focus solely on the rural economy, but I make this promise to the Secretary of State: in the future, I will be pressing him and his Government on rural infrastructure, flooding, crime, healthcare, broadband and mobile signals, the solar and wind industries and other matters that affect our countryside, because the impact of this Budget and the choices Labour has made will be felt for years after his expensive wellies have worn out.
I am going to focus on three broken promises by Labour; I am going to make it simple for them. The first broken promise for farming families is the removal of the tax relief that has meant families can pass on their farms to the next generation: agricultural property relief and business property relief. These are not loopholes, as they were described by the city-dwelling Chancellor, but careful tax policy planning developed over many years to prevent family farms and businesses from being split up and sold off. Of course we support efforts to root out abuse of the tax system, but the way in which the Chancellor has designed this policy means that it is tenant farmers and farmers in the middle who will struggle, not the very wealthiest.
This morning, I asked farmers on social media to send me details of how the policy will affect them and their businesses, and it makes for anguished reading. Farmers are furious, anxious and even distressed about the changes. They feel that the Government are coming after them and their families’ livelihoods, when all that they and their ancestors have done is work hard, follow the rules and feed us. I have been inundated with messages about tenant farmers, whom the Government seem to have forgotten. A Welsh landowner has contacted me to say that this change in policy will mean that he must tell six multigenerational farming families on his land that he will have to sell their farms to pay Labour’s family farm tax. As he put it,
“they will lose their homes, businesses and their children’s futures”.
In winding up the debate, can the Minister please explain what those six tenant families are to do when their farms are sold?
An example of how the measure will affect landowning families is provided by a family who have worked their 500-acre farm for four generations. The farm is owned by the mother, who is in her 70s, and her two sons, who are in their late 40s and early 50s, their father having died a few years ago. They make an annual income of around £45,000. When the mother dies, the sons will face an inheritance tax bill of at least £870,000. There is no way in which they can pay that bill without selling their farm. Could the Minister advise the House how that family are to pay Labour’s tax bill without selling their farm?
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
The right hon. Lady has obviously had lots of letters and emails. Has she had a single one from any farmer who thinks this is a good idea? I have not had any from my constituency of Boston and Skegness.
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
We have—plenty!
Victoria Atkins
You couldn’t make it up, could you? This is what is so worrying. This is why, at the beginning, I talked about a Labour Government who do not understand and do not care, and it is exactly this attitude from the Government Front Bench that farmers and their families are seeing. In answer to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), I say as a former Treasury Minister that if there is evidence of abuse, of course the Treasury and the Chancellor must go after that, but given the way the Government have designed this policy, it is going to go after the hard-working families that look after our farms in our great county.
John Glen
My right hon. Friend and I have been Treasury colleagues. Officials often put forward this reform in the run-up to fiscal events, and she, like me, has resisted them. Will she reflect on the fact that significant landowners will have sophisticated tax planning regimes in place, that a large number of very small hobby farmers will be excluded, and that those who will be hit are modest family farmers? Even when those family farmers need to raise a relatively modest amount over 10 years, the impact of securing that funding is beyond them, given the margins they get from farming. Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the fact that this is, without doubt, a Treasury hit-and-run? The Secretary of State flatters himself to think he has secured the overall budget, but he has left farmers in a far worse state. [Interruption.]
Victoria Atkins
My right hon. Friend makes an important point about our experience as Treasury Ministers. Labour Back Benchers are shouting “Give way!” because they do not like hearing the truth. They made this choice; we chose not to go down this route.
There are many ways in which we can support our family farmers, and I have had the pleasure of having a cup of tea with many of them around their kitchen table after they have shown me their farm. Labour Front Benchers lack such experience, because their constituencies are all situated in the city.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Victoria Atkins
I promise that I will give way in a moment.
As the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness and my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) have both said, the sense of betrayal is palpable. As a fifth-generation farmer put it to me this morning,
“Would you want to work somewhere that you knew over your lifetime was going to be taken away bit by bit?”
Another has urged us to
“fight this vindictive, illogical and ideologically driven tax”.
Just before I began my speech, in response to the Secretary of State’s speech, I received this message from another farmer:
“So long as mum dies before March 2026, we’re okay”.
Yet the farming Minister and the Secretary of State seem to think that these worries are exaggerated. Indeed, the farming Minister got a ripe old reaction when he said words to that effect at today’s poultry conference.
When we warned in June that a Labour Government would do this, the Secretary of State said that such warnings were “desperate nonsense” and accused us of lying. This followed the assurances he gave in December that Labour would not change this policy. So that is a broken promise. He is doing the exact opposite of what he said. How can rural communities trust him in the future?
The Secretary of State has given some helpful advice to farmers, however. He has told them that they will have to
“learn to do more with less”.
Labour has not said the same to train drivers, resident doctors or their other union friends. Indeed, pensioners and family businesses will be the ones paying for these public sector pay rises.
Liz Saville Roberts
Will the right hon. Lady join me in asking the Secretary of State, who did not allow me to intervene, whether the confirmation that agricultural funding for Wales is to be Barnettised means that the allocation will drop from 9.4% to 5.6%? According to the Farmers Union of Wales, that is a drop of £146 million and more. This will also affect Scotland and Northern Ireland, so we need clarity on this issue for Welsh farmers.
Victoria Atkins
I completely agree with right hon. Lady. If the Secretary of State would like to intervene on me, he can answer her intervention. Answer came there none.
Simon Hoare
My right hon. Friend is a very clever former Treasury Minister and I am not, so perhaps she can help me to reconcile these two statements. In essence, and in true Harold Macmillan phraseology, the Secretary of State told us that farmers have never had it so good, yet his advice is that they will have to learn how to do more with less. I cannot make those two things add up. Can my right hon. Friend?
Victoria Atkins
No. What is more, the NFU, the Tenant Farmers Association and the Country Land and Business Association cannot make them add up either.
Victoria Atkins
I will give way once more, and then I must make some progress.
Mark Garnier
The Secretary of State talked about the fact that the price of agricultural land is artificially high because of tax avoiders trying to avoid paying inheritance tax. The implication of the proposed measures would be that the price of agricultural land will fall. That may sound attractive to people who are trying to come into the market, but has my right hon. Friend considered the number of farmers who have mortgages against their land? They could find themselves in negative equity as a result of the pushing down of the price of agricultural land.
Victoria Atkins
Very much so, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) for their accurate and insightful interventions. Not only do some farmers have mortgages, but we know tenant farmers worry that their farms will be sold off, so that the landowners can enter into what some call a “greenwashing” agreement with corporates, in order to plant trees and gain access to green funds. One should not make the mistake of assuming that this ill-thought-through policy will lead to cheaper land prices: the maths on that is almost as bad as the Chancellor’s cockeyed accounting with her economic inheritance.
Let me tackle the ideology of this policy, reiterated by the Secretary of State during this debate, which is matched by Labour’s incompetence. First, the Chancellor herself does not seem to know the threshold at which her policy kicks in and whether spouses can transfer their allowances. Indeed, the Secretary of State does not seem to know that either. The Chancellor has said that the allowances can be transferred, yet Treasury documents supporting her Budget say that they cannot. In his winding-up speech, will the Minister clarify whether the Treasury’s documents are wrong or the Chancellor is wrong?
Secondly, will the Minister explain why this Government have targeted only British-owned farms and businesses with this tax hike? Companies operating here but owned overseas, private equity-owned businesses and public companies listed on stock markets will not have to pay Labour’s tax; it is just British families.
Thirdly, the Chancellor—and, indeed, just now, the Secretary of State—gave assurances that only a quarter of farms will be affected, but that is not backed up by the data from the Secretary of State’s own Department. DEFRA figures show that, in fact, these changes will affect two thirds of farms—some 66%. Will the Minister explain that discrepancy and what he has done personally to confirm those figures, so that he ensures he gives only accurate information to the House?
Several hon. Members rose—
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
Another point we need to consider is the impact on food security if farmers decide to hand back their farms or have their farms broken up, as my right hon. Friend suggests. Does she have any thoughts or has she seen any evidence about the possible impact on food security? I have not seen any such evidence, which is a concern in itself.
Victoria Atkins
It most certainly is a concern, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising that. He represents a very rural constituency and knows only too well the concerns his constituents are facing. It is a good point, which I will develop later in my speech.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
On that point, will my right hon. Friend give way?
Victoria Atkins
I will give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), and then I will make some progress.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is very kind, and she is making a masterly exposition of how to deconstruct this case. Did she notice, exactly a week ago, when we had an urgent question on the subject, the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs was asked how food security could be valued if the result of the Budget measures would be that farmland would be split up and sold off, probably for development. His answer said, in part:
“Of course there are trade-offs. There are a range of pressures on our land, in respect of housing, food, energy and so many other things.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2024; Vol. 756, c. 37.]
So he seemed to be accepting that land will be sold off and it will be built upon.
Victoria Atkins
Of course, the Government’s permissions for solar and wind industrial units on prime agricultural land will only add to those pressures as well.
Several hon. Members rose—
Victoria Atkins
I will make some progress. The immediate impact of the changes, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said in his intervention on the Secretary of State, is that farmers are already stopping capital investments in machinery, systems and buildings for fear that any improvements to their farms will send them over the cliff edge into this tax trap. So for a Government that claim to want to grow the economy, their choices are achieving the exact opposite. This family farm tax is a broken promise that will break family farms.
I move now to the second broken promise: the accelerated reduction in delinked payments. From next year, those vital payments will be substantially less than farms were promised. They cannot have foreseen that when they made their business plans. A tenant farmer has told me that he does not know how he is going to pay his rent next year, because the drop is worth more than £20,000. Can the Minister explain how this farmer should do more with less?
The third broken promise is the hike in national insurance for employers, of course. As the OBR has said, an increase in employer NICS will be passed “entirely” on to working people. I know that Labour does not actually know who it means by “working people” but the Conservatives are clear that it definitely includes farmers, their staff and the small businesses that support them, day in, day out.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
The shadow Secretary of State says that she opposes the changes. Will she commit to reversing them, and which public services would she cut—for example, which NHS services?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady is new to her place. As Financial Secretary to the Treasury I used to collect taxes for the United Kingdom and as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care I used to spend pretty much all of them, so I know that the £500 million that the Government have score-carded this increase as achieving by the end of the score-card period will buy a fraction of what the NHS needs on a daily basis, let alone annually. If you believe the Whips’ handouts, the difficulty is that they sometimes get you into trouble.
For that matter, the phrase “working people” also includes our rural publicans. Labour Members are very proud of their Chancellor taking a penny off a pint. Yet any rural publican will tell you that will not even touch the sides alongside the NICs tax hike. Sadly, Labour’s jobs tax will see higher prices, fewer staff and more pub closures.
The jobs tax is also hurting our frontline services. GP surgeries, care homes, hospices, pharmacies and dental practices will all see their costs rise, and some will close. That hurts in a city centre, but it is devastating in communities who live with the impacts of rural sparsity, where it is more expensive to deliver services.
Josh MacAlister (Whitehaven and Workington) (Lab)
I appreciate that the right hon. Lady has referenced the NHS. I get lots of letters, emails and messages from farmers who have been completely let down by the state of the NHS as it was left by her as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Given that she has a new role, has she had any time to reflect on where she went wrong?
Victoria Atkins
I know the hon. Gentleman’s part of the world very well and I am sure—I can sense that he will be a conscientious local MP, mindful of his small majority—that he will badger the Health Secretary and ask him why he has not delivered the Conservatives’ dental recovery plan, which this autumn would have seen dental vans in rural and coastal areas, because as the Secretary of State I wanted to ensure that those areas had dentistry services, and golden hellos for new dentists setting up in rural and coastal areas. We were also introducing additional dental training places. We can all see the need in our rural areas, but the jobs tax and the family farm tax are not the answer.
This Government love raising taxes, so they are also raising taxes on fertiliser, on double-cab pickups and on business asset disposal relief, while risking food security by permitting solar and wind industrial plants to be built on prime agricultural land. The great shame is that none of this is necessary. This Chancellor’s cockeyed accounting is not believed by farmers, the public or even the OBR.
In government, we provided the largest ever programme of grants to farmers and brought the farming budget to its highest ever level. We provided more than £5 billion for flood protection, and established a new national rural crime unit. But we also understood that farmers and rural communities need dynamic support, and that is why we committed to raising the farming budget by £1 billion over this Parliament—a move this Labour Government have failed to replicate. Their freeze in the farming budget with no guarantee of a forthcoming increase means they have chosen to offer farmers and rural communities a real-terms cut. That all adds up to a direct risk to food security, because if our farmers do not thrive, domestic food production suffers, and that means more imports and higher prices. This is the “don’t bother” Budget from the “don’t care” Government.
This is the Labour Government’s choice and they should own it. They have turned their backs on rural communities and we will not forget. We will not forget that this Government are happy to plough straight over anyone who is not a trade unionist. We will not forget the huge bills put by this Chancellor on to working people, pensioners, farmers, pub landlords, business owners, and students.
I repeat the pledge by the Leader of the Opposition—the Conservatives will reverse the cruel family farm tax. To all farmers, farming families and rural communities out there, I say that we Conservatives stand with you, we have your back and we will work night and day to hold this useless Labour Government to account.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call Josh Newbury to make his maiden speech.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to make my maiden speech as the Member of Parliament for Cannock Chase, my home. Having listened to many maiden speeches from all parts of the House, I have to say that I am honoured to be part of an incredibly talented intake—not that I am at all biased.
I also have the privilege of following some outstanding predecessors who are fondly remembered by my constituents. The best known is the late, great Jennie Lee who represented the former Cannock constituency for 25 years and also served as Minister for the Arts, playing a key role in the foundation of the Open University. Jennie was recently cited by the Chancellor as one of her political heroes and a contender to replace Nigel Lawson’s portrait in her office. Alongside her husband, the equally incomparable Aneurin Bevan, Jennie is commemorated across the constituency, including Jennie Lee Way in Rugeley and the Bevan Lee estate in Cannock.
I could not speak about past Members for Cannock Chase without paying tribute to my Labour predecessor, Dr Tony Wright, who served as MP for Cannock and Burntwood and later Cannock Chase from 1992 until 2010. Tony was the epitome of a dedicated constituency MP. Constituents regularly speak warmly of Tony and he won votes from across the political spectrum. If I can be half the MP Tony was, I will be able to look back on my time in this House with pride.
I would also like to pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Dame Amanda Milling, who served our constituency for nine years. Amanda is praised by both supporters and detractors alike for her efficient approach to casework, which I know would be the envy of many MPs’ offices. Amanda served as a Government Whip for many years—not an easy job—and as Minister for Asia and the Middle East. I understand that Amanda also chaired the group of female Conservative MPs and was a passionate advocate of programmes that encourage women to stand for election. I may not have often agreed with Amanda politically, but I have always found her to be fair-minded, kind and decent, so I genuinely wish her all the best for the future.
When people hear the words “Cannock Chase”, they naturally think of the stunning forest that is the constituency’s namesake. While making their first speeches, many new Members have claimed their constituency as the most beautiful in the land. However, I have to point out that my constituency is the only one in England that shares its name with an area of outstanding natural beauty—facts are facts! But the Chase is not just a place with serene walks and herds of fallow deer, although we have plenty of both. It is also a place of industry, sport and recreation. The Chase is still a working forest, managed by Forestry England, which produces around 19,000 tonnes of sustainable timber every year.
The Chase is arguably most famous as a national destination for mountain bikers. As someone who could barely stay upright on fresh tarmac, the conversations I have had about mountain biking have probably been the steepest learning curve I have been on since the general election. But I look forward to working with bikers and Forestry England to build on the legacy of the 2022 Commonwealth games and make sure that unauthorised trails do not spoil the natural beauty of the forest.
The Chase is a vibrant place with a huge range of activities, including the high ropes and free falls of Go Ape at Birches valley. I place on record an open invitation to the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), who, four months on from the general election campaign, must be suffering from zipline withdrawal. The iron-age hill fort of Castle Ring and the Chase’s former status as a royal hunting forest attest to its rich 12,000-year history. More recently, soldiers were trained on the Chase, including J.R.R. Tolkien, who was stationed there in 1916, and who may have drawn from it inspiration for the great forests in his legendary books.
However, as my constituents would be keen to remind us all, there is much more to Cannock Chase than our forest. Our tight-knit communities are home to organisations that we are immensely proud of. Charities such as Cherishers, Help a Squaddie, Catherine Care and Newlife are the best of Cannock Chase, bursting with dedicated staff and volunteers who selflessly give their time. The construction, retail and education sectors are the biggest employers locally—unsurprisingly, given that our three main towns of Cannock, Hednesford and Rugeley enjoy a strategic position on A roads and on a busy railway line. Cannock has the headquarters of Finning, the world’s largest dealer of Caterpillar construction equipment, as well as the west midlands designer outlet village.
Nevertheless, my constituency is not just urban and industrial; it is also semi-rural, with around a third of our land being agricultural. Clustered around the villages of Slitting Mill, Prospect Village, Cannock Wood, Wimblebury, Norton Canes and Heath Hayes is a tapestry of farms. Many of these communities feel left behind—last in the queue for infrastructure and services that other areas take for granted. A lack of access to GPs and bus services is frequently raised by my constituents in rural areas. We are also home to many businesses in the food supply chain, from processors to distributors. Because of those constituency interests, as well as my passion for the sector, I am delighted to be getting stuck into my role on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
Interspersed between houses, factories and nature reserves are small remnants of the once dominant coalmining industry, some of which are conscientiously preserved as much loved reminders of our proud mining heritage. While we do not want to see a return to coalmining, our towns and villages long for the secure jobs, social fabric and sense of common identity that characterised coalfield communities for centuries. The sudden closure of Rugeley power station in 2016 signalled a final move away from coal. The now cleared site is soon to be renewed, with a new community of hundreds of homes, a school and a new park, which will alleviate flooding from the River Trent. Following the very welcome and long overdue return of the mineworkers’ pension scheme investment reserve to hundreds of families in my constituency, I look forward to working with the Government and others to bring investment and renewal to communities across Cannock Chase.
Deciding what to say in a maiden speech leads us to reflect on what brought us to this extraordinary place, and what we hope to achieve for the people who sent us here. For me personally, it is momentous to be standing here, because 20 years ago I was a painfully shy young boy in the corner of the playground with my head buried in a book, trying as hard as I could to be invisible to the bullies who tormented me for a sexuality that, at that age, I did not yet understand. Today, I stand here proudly as a Member of this House. If I achieve just one thing in my new job, I hope it is to show young people who are in the position that I was in that your bullies do not define you, nor do they limit what you go on to achieve. I also hope to make my mark in other ways. Alongside my incredible husband, I am an adoptive parent to a beautiful four-year-old daughter, and foster carer to an equally beautiful nine-week-old baby boy, so adoption, permanence and our care leavers are all passions of mine.
Having been a councillor in my constituency for over five years, I am and will always be a fierce advocate for local councils and the tangible difference that they make to our communities. Given that my constituency has the highest proportion of people who commute by car in the whole of England, I know that a priority must be to fix the potholes. I am delighted that the Government are committed to both devolution and decent roads. As a proud member of the Co-operative party, I am always keen to promote democratic ownership. Communities in rural and coalfield areas know more than most the value of clubbing together and giving everyone a stake in the places and services that they rely on.
It is safe to say that I have lots on my to-do list, which is hardly groundbreaking for an MP, but I must finish by thanking the people who have enabled me to serve my home of Cannock Chase in this House. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a whole town to win an election campaign. I thank the Cannock Chase Labour party and all the volunteers who contributed to our record-breaking result. I thank my incredible family, many of whom are in the Gallery. They have helped me to overcome so much in my life, and they have put up with a lot; I am sure that many Members’ families can relate to that. The final thanks go, of course, to the people of Cannock Chase for giving me the opportunity to fight for our towns and villages. I will go on as I have started, repaying that trust with action and hard work for as long as they keep me here.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is traditional to say nice things about somebody who has just given a maiden speech, but that was a genuinely outstanding maiden speech. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) on the grace that he showed to his predecessor, and his clear and obvious expertise on, and passion for, his constituency. I will pass on the offer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), who I am sure will jump at the chance to go on a zipwire anywhere, but especially in the hon. Member’s patch. I am sure that my right hon. Friend’s diary secretary will be delighted with the commitment that I have just made on his behalf.
The hon. Member for Cannock Chase claimed to have the most beautiful constituency in the country. We will let that pass for the moment. I represent Westmorland and Lonsdale, which covers the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales—a vast area of the United Kingdom that is utterly beautiful. We are now the second largest constituency in England. I know that it pales into insignificance besides some of my highland colleagues’, but all the same, is it a place that I am very proud to represent.
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for leading this really important debate. I welcome the new shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to her position. I was thrilled and excited by the awesome picture painted of life in rural communities before 4 July, but just to bring us all back down to earth, I will remind us of what life was really like. Over the last five years, livestock farmers in my constituency and elsewhere have seen a 41% drop in their income. Look at our rural communities, and the evaporation of the long-term private rented sector, replaced by Airbnbs—unregulated, unintervened on, and unprevented. Second home ownership is gobbling up our villages and killing off rural communities. It is no surprise that at the last general election, the Rural Services Network calculated that if rural England was a separate region, it would be the poorest in England.
The Secretary of State will seek to be less disastrous for rural communities than the Tories who went before him. That is not a very high bar to clear, but looking at the Budget, I am concerned that he may not find that as easy as he thought. Let me say a thing or two about the Budget, in particular APR, BPR and the changes to inheritance tax. Some 440 farmers in my constituency will be affected by the APR and inheritance tax change. It is important to remember that very large numbers of people live on significantly less than the minimum wage, yet have a property that, on paper, is worth enough for them to be clobbered by the change.
While 440 farmers will be directly affected, hundreds of tenants will be indirectly affected, because when a landlord has to rearrange their business, perhaps to try to avoid paying inheritance tax, it will be tenants who end up losing out, however the landlord restructures their estate. I was pleased to hear the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs confirm at the Hexham northern farming conference last week that the Government will bring in a tenant farming commissioner. I congratulate and thank them for doing that, but the position will not be up and running before the policy has been introduced. Tenants will be evicted from their land. In our communities, we will see lakeland clearances as a result.
The policy has been sold as one that attacks the wealthy. No—the wealthy will find ways around it, just as we are finding with business property relief. I cite the case of the owner of a family-run, very famous, wonderful holiday park in the central lakes in my constituency. He is a father in his 90s. The business is not worth millions in terms of cash flow or profits, but to pay the death duties, the family will have to sell out to another big corporate. Big corporates and big equity houses will buy up farming and non-agricultural family businesses. When it comes to farming, land will pass into non-agricultural use, and the house will be turned into yet another second home. That will be devastating for not just family farms but rural communities as a whole.
Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)
Family farms are a key part of the fabric of our countryside, as farmers in my rural constituency tell me every day. They have spent all weekend trying to get my attention just to tell me that. What really worries me about the changes to inheritance tax in the Budget is that they will directly and disproportionately affect small family farms. Does my hon. Friend agree that that will have a devastating effect on small farms, and on our food security?
Tim Farron
I think it will. Many farmers earn less than the minimum wage, and although they own property worth an awful lot of money, it is worth nothing to them, really, because it is their business. As a consequence of the changes, someone will own that farm, but it will no longer be a family; it will be some huge estate, or a private equity firm. The Government must listen on that issue.
I will turn my thoughts to funding elements in the Budget. I have found a very rare creature: a Brexit benefit. Leaving the common agricultural policy, and moving towards environmental land management schemes—set up by the previous Government, adopted by this one, and supported in principle by the Liberal Democrats—was an opportunity to make things better for farmers and our countryside. However, the previous Government botched things completely by failing to fund the projects properly, and by taking away basic payments at a regular and dependable rate, and not replacing them quickly enough with a new payment under the environmental schemes. That has massively reduced our ability to feed ourselves. The agricultural policy of the last Conservative Government, which has, so far, been adopted by the current Government, is absolutely insane, in that it disincentivises the production of food. That is ridiculous, and I hope that the new Government look actively at putting it right.
The effect of the £350 million underspend by the previous Government was not felt in the pockets of the big landlords, who were able to get into the schemes relatively easily; it was smaller family farms that suffered, yet the Budget speeds up the rate at which we are getting rid of the basic payment, which is deeply troubling. A reduction of at least 76% in the basic payment for those still in the system will be devastating for their businesses. People do not know what to do next; they may end up backing out of environmental schemes and farming intensively in order to pay the rent and keep a roof over their family’s heads.
It is worth bearing in mind the impact that the measures will have on the mental health of farmers. Let us put ourselves in their position. A fifth or sixth-generation tenant farmer or owner-occupier might see that they could lose the family farm because of the Conservatives botching the system and the Labour Government’s cliff edge. Do not put people in that position. Give them time to move into new schemes, rather than kicking the legs of the old system from underneath them.
Let me say a word about trade deals before I talk about other important rural issues. The previous Government absolutely threw British farmers under the bus in the deals that they cut with New Zealand and Australia. We must of course be pragmatic about relationships with the incoming Administration in the United States, but in any deal with the US, I urge the Secretary of State not to do what the Conservatives did in their deals with Australia and New Zealand. Protect British farmers and protect our values, please.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Gentleman and I shared very similar concerns about the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. We feared that imports would swamp the market, but fortunately that has not come to pass; it has all been swallowed up by an ever-voracious Chinese and south-east Asian market. New Zealand lamb producers have actually reduced the size of the flock per capita. What we worried about has not come to pass, and we should be grateful for that.
Tim Farron
Well, I think it has come to pass, to a degree, in the sense that we allow equal access to our markets to those producing animal products—meat and other food products—who have lower standards than British farmers. That is just not fair; it is not a level playing field. The American market is far bigger, and my great fear is that doing a similar deal with Donald Trump will do much more harm to British farmers. I hope that the Secretary of State will be mindful of that.
Let me move on to other issues that affect our rural communities. In a constituency such as mine, the average house price is 14 times the average household income. We have a 7,000 household-strong waiting list for social rented housing. I mentioned earlier the collapse of the long-term private rented sector into Airbnb, which has a huge consequent impact on lives. I can think of a particular couple—she was a teaching assistant; he was a chef—who were kicked out by the landlord, who wanted to go with Airbnb. As a result, they had to take their two kids out of school, give up their jobs and leave the area completely. There were hundreds and hundreds of such cases, and the previous Government did not intervene until it was far, far too late.
The impact of the housing crisis in rural communities across our country is not just deeply upsetting and devastating for families, but damaging to our workforce. Sixty-six per cent of lakes and dales hospitality and tourism businesses are operating below capacity because they cannot find enough staff. One in five care jobs in Cumbria is unfilled because of a lack of permanent workforce.
Another matter that the previous Government refused explicitly to tackle, and which I hope this Government will tackle, is the scourge of excessive second home ownership in Britain’s rural communities. People own those bolthole homes but barely live in them. The excessive number of second homes in our communities means that we lose our schools, our bus services and the very heart of those communities. Will the Secretary of State consider doing what the Liberal Democrats have proposed for years by making second home ownership a separate category of planning use, so that planners have the opportunity to protect their communities?
On health, so many of the issues that we face in rural communities relate to distance from care and people’s ability to get where they need to be in time. That also means that we have efficiency issues. A GP serving a huge acreage may not be very efficient with their relatively small list, but we desperately need them. Will the Government consider our proposal for a strategic small surgeries fund to keep vital GP surgeries open in rural communities?
We must also bear in mind that some of the longest and most unacceptable waiting times for cancer treatment are in rural communities. We very much welcome the £70 million for radiotherapy that was announced just before the Budget—much to Mr Speaker’s chagrin—but will the Secretary of State bear in mind that 3.5 million people in the country, most of them in rural communities, live in radiotherapy deserts? Half of us will have cancer at some point in our lives, and half of those people should receive radiotherapy treatment, yet barely a quarter of them do. One reason for that is that communities such as mine are just too far from that treatment. Will the Government ensure that some of that money goes towards providing satellite units in Kendal and other parts of rural Britain.
On public transport, it is right to say that the Government have made a poor decision in increasing the bus fare cap. That will have a huge impact on low-wage workers, particularly in rural parts of the country. Frankly, a £3 cap—or even a £2 cap—is a fat lot of good if there is no bus to use it on. I encourage the Secretary of State to devolve to local authorities the power to run their own bus services, and not to enforce local government reorganisation in order to achieve it—just give them those powers now.
I am coming to the end of my remarks, I promise. On broadband, the new Government—and the previous Government—have made good progress on Project Gigabit, and we ought to be grateful for that, but they must be aware that there will always be places that the project will not reach, including four in my constituency: Warcop, Hilton, Murton and Ormside. Those places are in deferred scope and, currently, are likely to get no service whatsoever. Will the Government consider de-scoping those places so that they can access vouchers? That would allow B4RN, our wonderful local not-for-profit broadband company, to step in and do the job.
You will be delighted to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this is my final point. It is worth pointing out that under the Conservatives, 45% of water bill payers’ money went into the pockets of shareholders in dividends, into bonuses or into debt financing. Meanwhile, half a million instances of sewage dumping in our lakes and rivers happened each year. We welcome some of the Government’s proposals to clean that up, but without radical reform of the industry—which they are not proposing—that problem will not be solved in a long-term way.
In conclusion, our rural communities have been taken for granted and deeply damaged by a Conservative Government; our memories in rural Britain are very long, and they will not be excused that failure. We also see a Labour Government whose early start is not promising for our rural communities. As such, we in the Liberal Democrats have made a deliberate choice to be the voice of rural communities. We will take up that mantle with humility and passion, because a Britain that cannot feed itself is a Britain that will fail.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call Chris Kane to make his maiden speech.
Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)
It is a great honour to be called to make my first contribution in this place as the Member of Parliament for the new constituency of Stirling and Strathallan. My constituency is the geographic heart of Scotland, and what a beautiful part of the world I am lucky enough to represent! At just under 2,500 sq km, it is predominantly a rural constituency—from its farming villages, including Drymen, Buchlyvie, Callander and Killin, to its former coalmining villages of Bannockburn, Fallin, Plean and Cowie; from the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond to the mountains of the Trossachs and the valleys carved by the rivers Forth, Endrick, Teith and Allan. It has the city of Stirling, with its majestic castle defending a royal burgh that became a royal city in 2002, and the city of Dunblane, with its magnificent medieval cathedral.
Politically, I follow in the footsteps of a daunting list of constituency representation that includes one Prime Minister, the father of a Prime Minister, two Secretaries of State for Scotland, a Secretary of State for War, a Father of the House of Commons and a Leader of the House of Lords. In my lifetime, we have had Harry Ewing, the godfather of devolution; Michael Forsyth, who brought the Stone of Destiny back to Scotland; and Dame Anne McGuire, who as Minister for disabled people signed the first human rights charter of the 21st century on behalf of the United Kingdom at the United Nations. Steven Paterson and Stephen Kerr bring us to my predecessor, Alyn Smith. Alyn represented Stirling in the previous Parliament, but prior to that, he represented Scotland with distinction as a Member of the European Parliament. He cares deeply for Scotland and has public service at his heart. I wish him well for the future and thank him for his service.
The coalfields of central Scotland transformed the landscape of the southern end of my constituency over the past 150 years. My great-grandfather, William Kane, was a miner, and while working at the coalface in 1914, a large rock dislodged from the ceiling and crushed him. William died from his injuries. His son, my grandfather Frank, was 12 years old, and had to leave school to earn money—not to take the family out of poverty, but to keep them alive. Everything that troubles me about that story has been improved by the Labour party and the trade union movement, with their relentless focus on improving workplace conditions and workers’ rights over the past 100 years.
“We feel that something should be done. We have the idea that one of the functions of the Government of this country is to see to it that there should be equality, equity, and fairplay between the parties, that the weak should be protected from any outrage by the strong…It is the business of the Government to see to it that there should be equity and fairplay between all conditions of people in the State.”—[Official Report, 13 December 1922; Vol. 159, c. 3011.]
Those are not my words, but those of my grandfather Frank’s uncle, Hugh Murnin, who was also a miner. They were spoken by Hugh in this place, in his maiden speech, after he became the MP for Stirling in 1922. Reading all of Mr Murnin’s speech, I was struck by how much has changed from his description of work, and how much has stayed the same. There is still much to do to delivery dignity and fair play, which is why I am proud that this Government are raising the national living wage and, through the Employment Rights Bill, will update the UK’s outdated employment laws and turn the page on an economy blighted by insecurity, poor productivity and low pay.
I should say that 12-year-old Frank, my grandfather, became a grocer’s apprentice. He developed an entrepreneurial spark that took off when the BBC began broadcasting in Scotland in the 1920s. He opened Bannockburn’s Radio Music Store to supply radio sets and constantly recharge the large lead-acid batteries on which they depended. That business prospered under my parents, Bill and Diane, and my brother Michael runs the business today—shop local when you can.
Along with coal, the rivers and lochs of my constituency bring with them nutrients that are vital for farming. The flat floodplain of the Forth is 16 miles long and 4 miles wide, and is filled with farms that today produce everything from beef to dairy and from sheep to pumpkins. For many years, the River Forth was Europe’s premier oyster fishery. Over 30 million oysters were harvested each year in the early 19th century, but overfishing caused a collapse and the Forth oyster was declared extinct in 1957. Issues such as overfishing and sustainability are studied in great depth at the University of Stirling’s international centre for aquaculture, the largest of its kind in the world. It is leading the way in research to tackle the global problems of food security, hunger and sustainability through the world’s rivers and seas. It was also a researcher from the institute of aquaculture who discovered in 2014 that the Forth oyster was still alive, with two of them growing in the river.
When the railway arrived in my constituency in 1848, it brought with it an entrepreneurial spirit that saw Scotland’s first oil refinery open in Riverside in Stirling. Until the Forth bridge opened in 1890, the bridges at Stirling carried most of Scotland’s goods to and from the highlands. Scotland’s first heavier-than-air flight took place in Stirling when the Barnwell brothers built and flew an aircraft in the shadow of Stirling castle. That entrepreneurial spirit lives on in the likes of Highland Spring, a fantastic family business in Blackford that neighbours Gleneagles, one of the world’s premier hotels and golf courses. In Stirling, a £20 million investment has recently been announced to create a film and TV studio that will be the largest in Scotland. Stirling was the first gigabit internet city in the United Kingdom, and one of the first in the world to digitally map its city to create an augmented reality smartphone experience.
We are a growing base for life sciences, manufacturing and, of course, tourism. My constituency offers some of the best outdoor activities in the country, from salmon fishing to hillwalking, with lots of family-friendly activities along the way. If history and heritage are your thing, we have castles, monuments, battlegrounds and the only working church other than Westminster Abbey to have hosted a coronation. For those who like sport, Stirling was showcased to the world in 2023 with the time trials of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s cycling world championships. Scotland’s national swimming academy is at Stirling University and has produced Olympic medallists including Duncan Scott and Robbie Renwick. The UK’s national curling academy is also in Stirling, and I cannot mention sport without referencing Judy, Jamie and Andy Murray, whose success, resilience and mindset have forever linked tennis with the city of Dunblane.
Stirling and Strathallan is not in the heart of Scotland: it is the heart of Scotland. Much of the modern sense of Scottish cultural identity originated in my constituency, from the battles of Wallace and Bruce at Stirling bridge and Bannockburn over 700 years ago to the reinvention of tartan at the mills of William Wilson—also in Bannockburn—in the 1800s. A much more subtle sense of my constituency is found here in this place and in the UK identity, because it was a Stirling resident, a weel-kent local face called King James VI, who united the kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1603. I have walked about this place wondering which of our traditions have their origins in the traditions of the court of King James at Stirling castle.
Stirling is celebrating its 900th anniversary this year—900 years since King David granted a small settlement on the River Forth burgh status. Stirling and Strathallan has gone on to give much to Scotland, the United Kingdom and the world over the past 900 years, and there is much more to come. Stirling and Strathallan is proud of its past and ambitious for its future, and I am hugely honoured and privileged to represent my home here in this place.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the maiden speech of the new hon. Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane). I am sure he will make a significant contribution to this place, and as a fellow Scot I wish him well.
I am lucky to represent the Scottish Borders, the place I call home. We have wonderful towns in the borders, but it is one of the most rural constituencies in the whole United Kingdom. There is a strong sense of community spirit among local people, but there is also a deep and growing concern that the Governments in Edinburgh and London do not get what is important to our communities. There is a widening disconnect between people and politicians, and a growing feeling that the needs and concerns of rural areas are not important to Scotland’s two Governments.
For 17 years, rural areas in Scotland have been overlooked, and even ignored, by the SNP Government, who do not understand what is important to our communities—an SNP Government who are distracted and focused on their own selfish and often divisive obsessions. They spend time on fringe issues, such as gender reform, that do not matter to the everyday lives of people in the borders. With a new Government in London, local people are now feeling the same way about Labour. Labour clearly does not value rural areas and does not care about farmers or listen to our communities. The Labour Government are bad news for the borders and for rural areas across Scotland and the United Kingdom.
Let us look at what the Labour Government are already doing to rural communities. In their first Budget they changed inheritance tax, and business and agricultural property relief, despite warnings of the impact on rural areas. Their family farm tax will rip apart rural businesses and prevent farmers from passing on the family farm to the next generation. It is cruel, bitter and divisive. It is also the opposite of what Labour said it would do—another broken promise from the Labour Government.
Let us listen to what Labour said before the election. The Secretary of State said in December 2023 that the Labour party had no plans to change inheritance tax, including agricultural property relief, so it is shameful that he now claims to be proud of Labour’s family farm tax. He was not the only one to make that pledge. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, repeatedly promised not to raise taxes on working people, but that is exactly what they have done.
I have news for Labour: farmers are working people. In fact, they are some of the hardest-working people of any industry. They get up before dawn and put in a hard shift every single day of the week, 365 days of the year. Labour should be ashamed of raising tax on farmers and preventing them from passing on the family farm. This shameful betrayal will not be forgotten by rural areas or in my borders constituency.
Let me share with the Labour party what local farmers are saying, because it is clearly not listening. I recently spoke to Colin and Jill McGregor of McGregor Farms near Coldstream, who said:
“The autumn Budget that Labour broadcast last week will affect every family farming business across the country. We have been digesting the details over the last couple of days and can see a substantial financial impact on our farming business. The Government seems to have no idea of the costs involved in agriculture. The tax that would have to be paid on death will cripple many family farms, with a huge proportion having to sell land to pay the tax and breaking up family businesses that have been working the land for many generations.”
Labour does not seem to care about the damage it is doing to farming.
Farming is not just a job but a way of life. We cannot overlook the immense contribution that our farmers and food producers make towards the rural economy and protecting our natural environment. They supply supermarkets and local shops, provide for housing in our towns and villages, invest in infrastructure, create jobs, employ workers, and much more. It is crucial that the Government take the right steps and measures to protect the industry and ensure its longevity for many years to come.
Labour and the SNP must provide certainty and stability to our farmers. If they do not, farmers and landowners will no longer invest or provide those important services. We should not forget: no farmers means no food. Labour’s family farm tax will not just break up family farms, but limit food production, damage our food security and drive up the cost of our weekly food shop in supermarkets. Labour must drop the tax and keep its word to farmers.
But that is not all: Labour must start listening to rural areas. As it stands, Labour’s plans will do great damage to local transport plans. Labour has announced plans to drop the dualling of the A1 road, which is a vital transport link for my constituency in the Scottish Borders and for cross-border connections between Scotland and the rest of the UK, and it has halted progress on the borders railway, which is crucial for commuters and anyone looking to get around in the borders. How is the borders economy supposed to grow, and how are businesses supposed to create jobs, when Labour is cutting investment in our communities?
I will always stand up for rural areas, especially those in the Scottish Borders. It would be nice if, just once, the Labour party did the same.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call David Taylor to make his maiden speech.
David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)
It gives me enormous pride to be stood before you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to make my maiden speech as Hemel Hempstead’s MP. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) and for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane). I know Stirling well through my involvement in the Make Poverty History campaign; it is a very beautiful place.
I am grateful to make my maiden speech in the presence of the Secretary of State, who was generous with his time in my constituency during the election. I am humble enough to accept, however, that the primary reason for his presence was usually the fact that his mother resides in Hemel Hempstead and is a member of the local party.
In this debate about rural affairs, I want to start by paying tribute to the beautiful countryside that surrounds our town, and to the villages that are part of the constituency following the changes to the boundaries at the last election. From St Lawrence’s church in Bovingdon, where I was this morning to mark Armistice Day, to Chipperfield cricket club and the Green Dragon pub in Flaunden, we are blessed with many picture postcard scenes—and my dog, Albert, is particularly fond of chasing squirrels on Chipperfield common.
Turning to Hemel itself, the old town is so picturesque that one local council official jokingly referred to it as Hemelwood, such is its popularity as a filming location for local TV and movies. We were once home to the site of a major Roman villa on the River Gade, which supposedly had the biggest Roman bath outside Bath itself.
When Hemel town council was amalgamated into a new district council, exactly 50 years ago this year, the then Labour leader of the council, Gordon Gaddes, who is still a stalwart in our community even though he is now in his 90s, chose an old Latin name for the council—Dacorum, which means “of the Dacians”, referencing a period in Saxon times when Danish law applied due to the presence of the Vikings. We also have a long-standing connection to Henry VIII, who in 1539 granted the town its market charter. Because of him, the mighty Hemel Hempstead Town FC are nicknamed the Tudors.
Like many others, my family’s connections to the area come from the creation of the new town after the second world war. This new town was one of Labour’s finest achievements, providing families with decent housing, good-quality factory jobs, education and healthcare. From Chaulden where my dad grew up to Highfield where my mum did, and Adeyfield where my nan lives now, council housing surrounded a square with amenities such as shops, a community centre, a place of worship, a GP surgery and schools. I therefore welcome our new Government’s commitment to build genuinely affordable housing and new council homes, while also ensuring that the right infrastructure accompanies them. As we seek to build new towns around the UK, I would be happy to show Ministers the virtues of our ingenious, and often misunderstood, magic roundabout.
I pay tribute to my predecessor, Sir Mike Penning. It was not just our community that he served with loyalty, but this nation: Sir Mike was a distinguished Grenadier Guardsman in the British Army and subsequently served as a firefighter in Essex. In his maiden speech he said that when he left this House he wanted to be known as a good constituency MP. He certainly was, doggedly taking up his constituents’ individual cases when they needed him.
I also pay tribute to our two previous Labour MPs: Tony McWalter, who was kind enough to take me under his wing when I was a member of the UK Youth Parliament, and Lord Corbett. Sadly, I never had the opportunity to meet Robin, but I know from my friendship with his widow, Lady Val, that he was a wonderful, warm and kind man who served his constituents with compassion.
That leads me to the points that I will prioritise as I serve the people of Hemel Hempstead. First, I will strive to improve local healthcare, including by pushing for a new community hospital. In line with this Government’s commitment to neighbourhood-based care, and enjoying the support of the local NHS trust, the local council and my predecessor Sir Mike, I will push hard for the project to advance in the most ambitious way possible, as well as ensuring that access to GPs and dentists improves.
I will make sure that children in Hemel Hempstead, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities, get the best possible education. The SEND situation, not only in Hertfordshire but in Dacorum itself, is particularly bad; the issue came up repeatedly when I was talking to voters as a candidate, and it is at the top of my postbag now as an MP. At one of my most recent surgeries one parent, Natasha, told me that her son Alfie had been diagnosed with autism aged five, yet he has been repeatedly refused an education, health and care plan and has been waiting for a specialist appointment for almost two years. Sadly, her story is one that Members of this House will know all too well. I am glad the issue is an area of priority for our new Government, and I will continue to work on it on a cross-party basis as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on SEND.
I will also prioritise combating crime. Recent stats show that Hemel was the one of the worst towns in Hertfordshire for antisocial behaviour—indeed, it was the worst major town—while vehicle crime is at 105% of the national crime rate. I have seen that at first hand when I have had the opportunity to go out with local bobbies on the beat. I will work hard to make our community safer, whether by getting more police officers in our town or by working to reopen the front desk at Hemel police station.
I know that the cost of living crisis is hurting people locally. Food bank use has gone up 1,000% in the past 10 years in my constituency. I applaud the work that local charities such as DENS, Community Action Dacorum and Hemel Hempstead Community Fridge are doing to help. I am doing everything I can to stand alongside them, but I also pledge to push for better decisions to be made here in Westminster to ensure that food banks do not need to exist at all.
In concluding his maiden speech, Sir Mike paid tribute to the person who brought him into politics, the late Sir Teddy Taylor—no relation; it is a common name—and it is only fitting that I do the same. After taking part in the UK Youth Parliament, I thought long and hard about which great cause I wanted to focus my time and energy on. I got involved with the Make Poverty History campaign; I still have the wristband around my wrist. I attended a rally exactly 20 years ago outside the Labour conference, where I heard the then Chancellor Gordon Brown speak in thunderous terms of our duty to help those less fortunate than ourselves. A few years later, I had the enormous privilege of working for him, with my newly elected hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Kirsty McNeill). Many within these walls and beyond will recognise his—and her—unrelenting dedication and drive to improve the lives of others, which inspires me to this day.
Finally, I add my name to those who have paid tribute to Jo Cox in their maiden speech. With the Labour Campaign for International Development, and now as a member of the International Development Committee, I remain committed to taking forward her legacy, particularly on the responsibility to protect civilians, which is so urgent everywhere from Ukraine to Syria to Sudan.
As Gordon said on the eve of the poll back in July, we have a choice in the UK and around the world: to succumb to pessimism or to embrace hopefulness and remember that, in Jo’s words,
“we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]
I will do my utmost, as long as I have the honour of representing the people of Hemel Hempstead, to push for a more hopeful future in our community, our country and our world.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Members will be conscious that lots of speakers wish to contribute this evening. After the next speaker there will be a six-minute limit, which may need to be reduced in due course.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
What a privilege and a pleasure it is to have been here this evening for three outstanding maiden speeches. It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor). As it happens, I learned to swim at Dacorum leisure centre, but I never knew what “Dacorum” meant until tonight, so I am grateful to him for that. It was great to hear about the developing film industry in Hemel Hempstead, which used to be famous for the old Kodak building. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) says that Cannock Chase is more than a forest; the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead has certainly demonstrated that Hemel Hempstead is much more than an extremely complicated roundabout. All three hon. Members will be great contributors to this House of Commons and assets to our democracy. It was a pleasure to hear from them.
Rural Britain is different. The rural economy is different, quality-of-life issues are different, the profile of crime is different—almost everything is different. In some ways it is better—we have somewhat better air quality, and we spend less time sitting in traffic—but there are also many challenges. The sheer distances involved affect so many things, from people’s ability to access regular specialist healthcare treatment to their ability to get the right T-levels placement for their career. That, in turn, has an impact on health inequalities and social mobility. The costs of provision mean that many of our constituents are off mains drainage, and many more again are off the grid. That has implications for their costs and, indeed, for decarbonisation.
On connectivity, things have improved a great deal, but many Members of this House will have had, or heard about, the experience of having to go to the end of the lane to receive a text message verification code that has already expired by the time they get back. Thankfully, such things continue to improve, but there is still a big gap between our rural and urban areas.
This is a broad topic. We could debate any of the issues that I mentioned, but to avoid being repetitious of other Members, I will restrict myself to three disparate topics. The first relates to connectivity, not for broadband or mobile but for an older technology that often gets overlooked: the phone. Rural areas have a particular angle on the upcoming roll-out of the voice over internet protocol, which will replace the public switched telephone network. Another thing to add to the list of differences in rural areas is the weather, which means that electricity lines get knocked over more often. We still have power cuts in rural areas, with a frequency that people in cities might find hard to believe. Sometimes they last for a few hours, but we had one in East Hampshire in the past few years that lasted for more than three days.
The proposal to get rid of traditional telephones, which are a lifeline in such cases, and replace them with internet telephony that relies on a one-hour power back-up was never going to work in rural areas. I am pleased that there has now been a pause, and I am also pleased that some operators, including Vodafone, which I spoke to the other day, are looking into a much better power back-up. We need to see more on that, but in the meantime we need to ensure that consumers who are changing system are made aware of the position.
My second topic relates to housing and affordability. It is quite a niche topic nationally, but it is definitely not niche in my constituency, where we have an area that is partly in a national park and partly outside it. The housing targets are set for the whole district, but there are severe restrictions on what can happen inside the national park, so there is a great deal of pressure on development and therefore on services just outside it, in places such as Alton, Four Marks and the southern parishes of East Hampshire. It is also an issue inside the national park, because there is already an affordability discrepancy between inside and outside. Over time, as there is disproportionate development outside, that discrepancy will grow. I hope the Minister will discuss this anomaly with his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and that it can be fixed in the national planning policy framework rethink.
The situation is exacerbated by the massively higher housing targets now coming for rural areas, with the change in the formula meaning much higher targets for areas such as mine but with targets reducing for parts of London, where clearly there is a major, and in most measures a greater, housing affordability issue. I ask Ministers to look again at how the affordability ratio and the overall formula work and seek to ensure that the new housing that gets built, not just the existing stock, is truly accessible and affordable to local people, not just creating very large numbers of new five-bedroom executive homes which will be just as out of reach as those already there.
My final point, which I know all Members will make tonight, is about the importance of farming. Nobody here needs to be told about the importance of farming; it is not quite the same thing as rural affairs but there is such a heavy overlap, and we rely on farmers for so much—for land stewardship, biodiversity, and managing the attractiveness of the countryside for the visitor economy. When we get snowed in in Hampshire, we even rely on the farmers to clear the roads.
Most of all we must never forget that we rely on these men and women for our food. Land yield really matters; it matters to them as agricultural businesses, but it also matters to us. The one asset we cannot increase in size is the total amount of land that we have in the country. It is in our national interest to support the farming sector to be able to get the most production possible out of the land. I urge the Government, genuinely, to think again about how they support this sector with the farming budget, with having a formal target for food security, and of course with rethinking their terrible move on inheritance tax.
There have always been different types of farms—large and small, owner-occupied and tenanted—but family farms have always been at the heart of our agricultural sector. They are businesses, but in one sense they are unlike other businesses. Their biggest asset is not something they have bought and is not something they intend to sell, so in that sense they are more like custodians of an asset than owners.
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Damian Hinds
I must ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me, as I need to finish in less than one minute.
The agricultural property relief and business property relief changes will cut right into this asset. I have a constituency example, a 50-acre farm with an estimated farm value of £5.5 million, but the profit from it is only £19,000 per year. In the event of the demise of the parents, the liability could be £900,000, and there is no way with a return on total capital of 0.35% that they can do anything other than sell it. That matters not just to that family but to all of us. First, there is the concern that larger businesses will come along and buy up these family farms, and they are not necessarily buying them to plant crops or rear livestock; they may use them for renewable energy projects or carbon credit use, and that will mean less food production. Secondly, being aware that a tax is coming upon death, the current generation farming the land will be disincentivised from investing in the farm, knowing the return effectively will be lower. For those two reasons, it does not just matter to those families; it matters to every single one of us in this Chamber and every single one of us in this country, and I ask the Minister to please think again.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Can Members imagine what it is like for someone to not be able to see, hearing water flooding into their home, not knowing where it is coming from, fearing how deep it might get, with no idea where the next escape route might be in the house? Can they imagine being a child who has previously become homeless due to flooding and lost their most treasured possessions, for whom just hearing a raindrop outside triggers their post-traumatic stress disorder and nightmares? Can they imagine being a farmer whose entire crop is lost to the impact of flooding? Can they imagine being a carer for a child on dialysis, knowing that when it rains they could soon be dealing with pumping out contaminated water from their own home while their child is having treatment?
For many, these situations are not unimaginable; it is their reality. That is not a surprise when flooding is the most recorded natural disaster on this planet. In 2023, 176 flood disasters were recorded across the world, a similar number to the year before, both of which are significantly higher than the average of 86 recorded in the 1990s.
One third of our planet is prone to flooding, and over five million people here in the UK live or work in flood-risk areas. Flooding is also a huge economic problem, as we have heard today. According to work by the Risky Cities project, Arup and other partners, the single biggest shock or stress that can affect the economy of 60% of the Rockefeller Foundation 100 resilient cities across the world is flooding. However, it is not just too much water; we are increasingly seeing the impact of too little water, or drought, and too dirty water, or pollution, impacting our rural and urban communities.
Water knows no boundaries, whether geographical, political or topographical. That is particularly challenging in countries such as ours where we have tried to make sense of the natural world and environment by creating frameworks and therefore putting boundaries in place. Water is complex. In many parts of the country, we could walk a kilometre alongside a watercourse and anywhere along that stretch someone might be impacted by flooding. The same water can pass along a river managed by the Environment Agency, into a culverted area managed by the local authority, through a farmer’s field with riparian ownership, back to the EA, into an internal drainage board-maintained ditch, through a water company pumping station, back to a sustainable urban drainage pond managed by the local authority, and so on. In that short stretch between here and Westminster bridge, we could have several hand-offs and handovers of that ownership of an asset by half a dozen authorities.
To be frank, if we ask any of my residents who I visited recently in Westwoodside in Axholme, a rural area, or the River Idle Flood Action Group in Bawtry, they will tell us that they do not care who owns the water, they just want that water out of their homes, out of their gardens, and out of their business premises. In fact, they do not want it even to get to the stage where it comes in in the first place.
The same water management principle applies to cleanliness, whether water is impacted from diffuse sources like the run-off from land, combined sewer overflows, trade waste, septic tanks or misconnections. The ammonia, E. coli, enterococci, nitrates and metals that impact our ditches, dykes, rivers and oceans come from many sources owned by many individuals and organisations. We all have a massive part to play in cleaning up watercourses, and the fact remains that we need to manage water across the whole catchment; that requires system thinking and it requires our rural communities.
A catchment approach is imperative in managing water across the whole water cycle and in leadership, both role model and visionary. Role model leadership involves acting now. We have seen how this Government have focused and taken swift action through the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which will start to tackle part of the challenge, setting up the flood taskforce, providing £60 million in the Budget for flood-related work with the agricultural community, and the biggest agricultural budget in history for sustainable farming.
Visionary leadership involves looking at long-term planning for resilience to flooding through adaptation and mitigation. It is the kind of vision that considers innovation through sustainable urban drainage and nature-based solutions, working with the land to create flood adaptation while improving soil effectiveness, reducing carbon and finding new commercial opportunities. I have seen examples that deliver a combination of these things, like farmers in Yorkshire planting pop-up rainforests. That visionary leadership should also consider education, new skills, behaviour change towards partnering and close working across all agencies. It is because of all the above that I welcome the Government’s action regarding the independent water commission, which will be the largest review of the sector since privatisation.
Nobody knows the land better than those who manage it, so I urge the Minister to continue to work closely with our landowners. Nobody is more passionate about the environment than our younger generations, so I urge the Minister to continue to work well with our Education Department around Skills England and the new opportunities for our rural areas. Nobody has more passion locally than our communities, who want to see improvements on their doorsteps. So may I finally urge our Minister to consider how to best work and co-create with our community groups—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate all those who delivered their maiden speech tonight, and I look forward to hearing more from them in the years to come. I welcome this debate, which is exceptionally timely and important, and the fact that it is in Government time. I say gently to those on the Treasury Bench that if this is the start of a process of engagement with rural communities, that is welcome, but there has to be a process; this debate alone will not be enough.
The truth is that in the countryside, there is a genuine crisis of confidence in communities’ futures, and in the future of farming. That is felt deeply in my constituency. I spent time on Saturday afternoon talking to four farmers in Orkney. Those young men had made a genuine commitment to the industry and are now at a loss. I really did not know what I could say to give them comfort or optimism. The language they used was interesting. One of them continually described the changes as “cruel”. It is worth reflecting on why he did that. It was not hyperbole. Here was somebody who had given his family and his community a commitment that he would farm for the rest of his days, and suddenly it felt as though he had been cut off at the knees.
The Minister will doubtless tell us the number of estates that will, or will not be, affected. Those figures will need rather more robust scrutiny than they have had thus far. However, it is not all about figures; it is also about the psychology and the commitment. These people are hurting, and if there is to be any chance of the Government turning things around, there will have to be a rather more substantial and prolonged programme of engagement. Farming is at the heart of the countryside community. This is not just about the money that goes to farmers; that money then goes to seed merchants, feed merchants, hauliers, marts, vets, contractors, and the one-man businesses that go around farms paring feet, scanning for pregnancy and the rest of it. It is right that the most significant feature of the Budget for the community was inheritance tax, but there was an awful lot more in it that caused me concern.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman mentions the consequences for the broader community and businesses of extra taxes on the agricultural sector. Those are felt in my constituency of Basildon and Billericay, where we have the big New Holland tractor factory. This weekend, constituents were already coming to me worried about how the changes will impact their jobs. It is not just rural Britain that is affected. Does he acknowledge that there is a knock-on effect across the entire economy?
Mr Carmichael
I fear that there absolutely is that impact. That is why I gently caution those who frame the issue as a debate between urban and rural communities to think a bit more carefully. There is a strong case to be made for explaining to people in towns why people in the countryside matter to them, their future and the economy, rather than setting this up as a contest between the two.
Beyond inheritance tax, other issues in the Budget caused me concern, including the return of changes to the treatment of double cab pick-ups, and the effect of the carbon border adjustment mechanism on fertilisers. We all know what happened to food prices the last time we saw a spike in fertiliser prices. That was not caused by the imposition of a tax, but it does not matter what causes it; the effect will still be felt by families. There are also the measures on furnished holiday lets. Farmers have for decades been encouraged by successive Governments to diversify their business. Many have gone into furnished holiday lets for extra income, but they now find that they are being clobbered again. They are having the rug pulled out from underneath them.
The inheritance tax changes have generated the greatest concern. I hear talk of scaremongering, but there has to be better respect than that for those concerned about the changes. I suspect that a lot of the figures that we hear have been affected by inter-vivos transfers between the generations. That is the most obvious way that inheritance tax can be dealt with by an estate or a family, but it leaves families open to difficult conversations and to the law of unintended consequences. Nobody knows what is around the corner, especially in farming, which, as we know, is one of the most dangerous occupations out there.
I have sympathy with the Government wanting to close fairly well reported and documented loopholes, but to do that at the expense of family farms is unjustifiable. The root of the problem, and the issue on which the Minister needs to engage with the Treasury, is that the threshold has been set far too low. When the Budget changes were announced, I went to estate agency websites in Orkney and Shetland, and I found two farms currently on sale in Orkney, both on one of the outer isles—further away, where we would expect land prices to be slightly lower—and both were being sold by the same family. One was for £2 million and the other was for £2.2 million. If those are the prices on an outer isle of Orkney, I can only assume that one would add a significant margin in Aberdeenshire, and a larger margin in Fife and the Borders. By the time we get to the home counties, goodness only knows what the price would be.
The concerns of agricultural and rural communities are genuine and well founded, and they need to be addressed. There is a serious debate to be had here, and I very much hope to be part of it. The Minister is well intentioned and diligent, but he needs to listen more to the people affected by his decisions—and, I am afraid, to listen less to the Treasury.
Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for setting out, earlier today, the support that our Government have put in place for rural areas, and particularly longer-term planned policies that will bring much-needed sustainability to rural communities such as mine in Shrewsbury. There are more than 350 farms in the beautiful villages to the west and south of Shrewsbury town, where there are stunning views over the Shrewsbury hills; it is an area of outstanding natural beauty and a well-known hiking spot. Locally, as nationally, farmers and the wider rural community have been concerned for several years, because despite all the noise from Opposition Members, the previous Conservative Government left our farmers to struggle. In fact, they presided over a deterioration in the profitability of British farming that decimated most of our smallest farms. They have been squeezed out of business due to ever higher overheads, low supermarket prices and creeping land values.
Where was the support from the previous Conservative Government? Where was the post-Brexit funding? Where was the post-Brexit trading deal that was to have protected animal exports? Where was the support with customs red tape? Instead, there were the SFI and ELM schemes, which were rushed, complicated and too short-termist to be of any real use. It is no surprise that there has been an underspend of £227 million on those schemes in the past two years, as farmers could not respond quickly enough to the complex schemes, and the schemes did not match their need for longer-term planning. That underspend is criminal when we consider that one in 10 dairy farmers has gone under in the past two years.
All across the industry, farmers are telling us the same thing: British farming is no longer profitable. This weekend, like many Members, I was out visiting my local farms in Arscott and Yockleton, just outside Shrewsbury. I met fourth and fifth-generation farmers. Yes, they did have questions for me about the threshold for agricultural land, and I was able to sit with them and explain that the threshold for couples is £3 million. More importantly still, for true family farms—those that we wish to protect—where at least two generations are working side by side in partnership, they can share not just the workload but their assets by planning their financial future. That is manageable. What is not manageable is those farmers’ overriding concern about the ever-declining profits in food production in our country. That is their No. 1 concern, and ours.
On every farm that I visit—I am sure that it is the same at every farm that hon. Members visit, whether arable or livestock—what comes up is the way that low product values, coupled with higher overheads, threaten not just farmers but all the supply chains that hold together the fabric of our rural communities, to whom we owe so much. I was therefore pleased to be able to remind farmers in my area that our Budget announcement —not much press coverage was given to it—delivered the greatest agricultural investment in our country’s history: £5 billion over two years. By the way, the fact that the commitment is over two years is welcomed by our farmers, who can finally plan, with security and stability, more than one season ahead. Given the awful conditions that they have endured over the last few years, that immediate injection of funding and certainty is very welcome. Let us not forget that it was the main ask of the National Farmers Union in the weeks and months leading up to our Budget; we have delivered on its No. 1 request.
However, what most pleased farmers—they were surprised to hear it—was our long-term plan in the new deal for farmers, through which we will protect farmers from being undercut, through trade deals, by those low welfare standards. We will also sign the all-important new veterinary agreement with the EU to cut red tape at our borders and get British food exports moving again.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Julia Buckley
I am sorry, but I need to rush.
Labour’s flagship policy, of which we are all so truly proud, is that we will underpin British farming with long-term sustainable contracts, by directing public procurement towards British suppliers. We will use the Government’s purchasing power to back British produce; 50% of food bought in every hospital, army base and prison will be locally sourced or certified to high economic standards. These are catering contracts that the Government are already funding. Now, thanks to our Labour Government, all that investment will benefit our local farmers directly, and for the long term. Every farmer I have spoken to is delighted to hear that we have understood that the problem is the long-term profitability of farming, and that the Government are prepared to put their money where their mouth is to protect British farmers.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I congratulate all hon. Members who have made their maiden speech today; they have all been genuinely fascinating and worth listening to.
I want to touch on the flooding issues that really cause concern in rural areas. Even in towns such as Tadcaster, which has the River Wharfe running through it, flooding is caused not just by water from the river, but by run-off in the town. The town depends on serviceable drainage, which can often get blocked, and drainage flaps. We are trying to get flood defences built, and are moving forward with money put in place by the last Conservative Government. Tadcaster’s flood alleviation scheme is crucial to the economic regeneration of the town, because people in such towns cannot have faith in the local economy if they are flooded all the time.
I say with this with great disappointment. I have had several meetings on these issues with the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water and Councillor Kirsty Poskitt—she is an independent councillor, but we are working well together—and Yorkshire Water promised us that the flap valve in Tadcaster that drains the water from the high street would be serviced once a month. That was a lie, and it has now said that it will do so every six months. That is not good enough. We are trying to do what we can for our communities, but we see the people in charge—the people whose responsibility this is—lie to our faces. We will have further meetings about that, because communities need certainty, and so do businesses.
There are also issues when housing developments are built in places with existing flood concerns. When we really get out into the countryside, communities can be cut off completely. They are struggling to cope with the watercourses as they are now, and we know that the weather and climate are changing—there is more water.
I have had had several meetings in one village, Bishop Monkton, since I became the Member of Parliament. I have spoken to local people, the parish council, local councillor Nick Brown and the flood groups. Again, promises were made, but we are not getting anywhere. Bishop Monkton has been let down by Yorkshire Water and the EA for too long. There is a new planning application for 60 new homes, and they say that the water system can cope with it. It cannot—that is blatantly obvious.
When these big developments go in, Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency should make them do water alleviation work through soakaways and slowing the flow, rather than just saying, “Well, according to our models, it can cope.” Sewage flows down the street in that small, picturesque, beautiful Yorkshire village in my constituency, yet it is claimed that there is nothing wrong.
The hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), who is a sound man, being a West Ham fan, said that nobody knows land better than those who manage it. He is absolutely right. That is why we should be concerned about this inheritance tax raid on farming, which will get rid of tenant farmers—those who have worked the land for generations and understand best the watercourses and what happens there. In the villages where I talk to people, who knows better than anybody else the hydrology of the land? It is the farmers and the people who live there. If all that goes to corporates who have no contact with the local communities, we will lose the knowledge and memory of the people who have worked that land for centuries.
Sir Gavin Williamson
I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend will have found this in his constituency, but in Staffordshire many farmers feel utterly betrayed. They listened when the Labour party said it would not punish them through inheritance tax changes, yet that is what it is doing. There is a real sense of being let down and betrayed by the Labour party.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. We know what our rural communities are like, and I am sure we all enjoy a pint, but when I go to the pub at the moment I hear farmers in despair saying, “We were told this wouldn’t happen.” As much as the small family farms, it is the tenant farms who are under real threat.
For all the statistics that are pumped out by the Treasury saying this and that, it very much sounded from the Secretary of State’s opening remarks that there is a small cabal at the top of No. 10 making all the decisions and that everybody else has to go out and sell them. We have all read that book, and we know where it comes from. I have to say to the Labour party that “Animal Farm” is not an agricultural playbook. That is what is going on: it is, “We will tell you how to run your farms. We will tell you where to get the money from. If you can’t do it, it is your failure. The state knows best how to run it.” Everything we have heard from Labour Front-Bench Members dismisses everything that has come from the NFU and thousands of farmers around the country.
I find it hard to believe that anybody has had nothing but positive letters and positive emails in their inbox saying, “Oh, it’s fine. We’re very happy about it. Everything you’re doing is great for the community. It’s all right. We believe you. It was written in big white letters on the barn door that everything will be fine.” That will probably change later on and Labour will say, “No, that’s what it always said.” We have read that book, and the Labour party needs to start listening to the people who till and farm our land.
It is not good enough to say, “You will be protected,” because they know that they will not be. That brings me back to the beginning. If we lose the people who understand the countryside and the hydrology, when in towns such as Tadcaster and rural villages such as Bishop Monkton and many more around my constituency we see housing going up on the land that has to be sold off to pay the inheritance tax bill, the flooding will become greater and greater. Ultimately, that will lead to a far higher cost to the country than the small amount of punitive tax that Labour claims will save the NHS.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
I would like to address four issues in the short time that I have. The first is water security. We have heard a lot about flooding today, but as my hon. Friend the Minister will know, in Norfolk we have the opposite issue—water shortages are more of an issue for us. I will also speak about controlled environment agriculture—a new development phase that we can turbocharge in this country—as well as the horticultural sector, which is vital for us, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency.
In Norfolk, as in the Minister’s constituency in Cambridgeshire, we need to look at water security in a lot more detail. When speaking with farmers last Thursday, one of the issues that came up was the building of reservoirs on agricultural land. Unfortunately, the Environment Agency and other planning authorities are proving to be more of a barrier than a supporter of this construction, which means that our farmers have to tap into more drinking water, which is more expensive and drives up prices for them. The floods Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who is not in her place, has been working closely with me, and I look forward to working with her to push forward new policies that ensure that reservoirs can be built on agricultural land to develop water security.
It is important to talk about new innovations in agriculture. All too often, we think of the more traditional methods—the herbicide era and the pesticide era—but we are going into a new era of vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture. I believe that these are vital not only because we can get higher yields from less land, but because they are better for the environment and help us meet our climate change targets. However, there is an issue in the current legislation on biodiversity net gain, and I would appreciate it if the ministerial team would consider it. Because these are closed structures, in their essence they are not net gain providers of biodiversity.
At the same time, these structures decrease land use because they can increase production on a smaller site. They also use fewer damaging pollutants that leach into the area because they are, by their nature, closed systems. They reduce carbon emissions because they are able to precisely grow and engineer the plants that we need. To follow a bit of a theme, they have a smaller water footprint—going back to my first issue of what is important for Norfolk, we need proper use management of our water system. It would be great if my hon. Friend the Minister would look into BNG requirements on controlled environment agriculture to make sure that we can grow this industry, tackle our climate emission targets and be at the forefront of this sector around the world.
Next up, horticulture is important for my constituency of South Norfolk. I have Viking Nurseries, which I will visit in couple of weeks’ time. Hon. Members’ teams may have noticed that I sponsored the Horticultural Trades Association in Parliament, which gave out 153 house plants. I hope that we brightened up the Houses of Parliament and all offices across the estate. It was a fantastic event, and it was important to raise awareness that horticulture should not be overshadowed by agriculture. Both are aspects of our economy.
The House of Lords report on horticulture recently showed that the sector supports 674,000 jobs and contributes about £28 billion to UK GDP and about £6 billion in taxation. It is not something to be sniffed at. We also need to bear in mind that our country was the forerunner in horticulture, and we have lost that crown over the years to the Dutch. There is no reason why we should not regain that crown, and we should be pushing for that as a new Government.
The other issue that I would like to concentrate on is biosecurity and the APHA. As was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, bluetongue was sadly first found in Haddiscoe in my constituency. The outbreak spread across the eastern coast, and we are living with the consequences. There are extremely sad situations when people take animals to market and lower prices are being charged for no reason, even though they are being moved within the market control area. That is an issue that we see with our biosecurity. This week we have also seen the first measured case of the new variant of avian influenza coming to our shores, which should worry us greatly.
From speaking to the APHA, it concerns me that it is fighting on so many fronts. Sugar beet has a longer growing season, so there are aphids for longer because they are not killed off by the frost, and we therefore have more yellow leaf. We have bluetongue and avian influenza and over the seas we have African swine fever as well. These are great risks to UK biosecurity. I greatly welcome what was announced in the Budget—more than £200 million for investment into biosecurity—but we must work closely with the Home Office to make sure that our border security officers are fully trained in this area to recognise the issues coming to our shores and protect our farmers, agriculture and horticulture, which provide so much to South Norfolk and to the United Kingdom.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
This debate has been about APR, but I will talk about flood risk. Suffolk is, by its nature, a county at high risk of flooding. Large parts of my constituency are covered by rivers: we have the Rivers Deben, Orwell and Alde. We have tributaries that filter across low-lying land and clay soil, which apparently is not particularly permeable—I learned that during the general election campaign. That means that whenever there is heavy rainfall, streams and rivers become overburdened very quickly, creating bogs, waterlogged fields and eventually flooding across our fields. The water has nowhere to go. Roads are overwhelmed, as are irrigation and sewerage systems, and whole villages can find themselves under a foot or two of water after one night.
One year ago, Storm Babet did exactly that. We experienced an incredibly wet October. One month’s rainfall fell between 11 and 13 October, then 80 mm in the 24-hour period of 18 October. People were stranded in villages and cars were stuck on driveways. People living in Wickham Market, Needham Market, Framsden and Charsfield were forced out of their homes. Some are not yet back in. People were traumatised, exhausted and facing financial oblivion after insurance companies used small print to stop paying out on the damage caused by the flooding.
We do not want to see that again, but the reality is that our climate is getting more volatile and the risk of flooding is as high as ever. We must take preparedness seriously, which is why Suffolk county council, the Environment Agency and community groups have undertaken to clear rivers, improve water flow through pipes and guttering, dig trenches and develop overflow areas in case of higher than average rainfall. I am more critical than many people of Suffolk county council and the Environment Agency for dragging their feet at times. I am working with residents of Earl Soham who are trying to get the highways agency to clear pipes and drainage. Suffolk county council is just not reacting quickly enough to that.
I recognise that the funding is not there when it should be. The funding from the centre is not adequate, and responsibility over who should take control of the situation is confusing, which is why I support the private Member’s Bill by my hon. Friend Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) to sort this out.
I want to talk about something else that I believe is a real reason that flood risk has increased, and to remind the House that we have the option of reducing it in future. One of the reasons that flooding has worsened in recent years is the development of vast numbers of housing units in areas of high flood risk. Each development not only puts more homeowners at risk of flooding, but compounds that by increasing the risk of surface water run-off.
I know deep down that the decision to reform APR and increase the inheritance tax liability for small farms is fundamentally about releasing land in rural areas so that developers can build more houses on it. There is no justification whatsoever for it from an economic point of view. There is no way the Government will raise enough money to support public services, as various Members have said today. The only viable reason that I can understand for the Government introducing APR on small farm holdings is because they want to release land for development. If we continue to concrete over fertile farmland, of any soil type, we will increase that risk.
Sam Rushworth
The Daily Telegraph, which I know is the paper of choice for more respectable Conservative Members, reported last year that wealthy investors are “hoovering up” agricultural land to avoid inheritance tax, a situation that it said meant more land was falling into the hands of private and institutional investors.
Patrick Spencer
Let me take a moment—Members throughout the House have an opportunity to watch—to address that exact case. The Labour party wants to tackle big landowners like James Dyson and the Grosvenor Group; I have two points. First, take for a moment the incredible work done by Dyson Farming on food technology, which is increasing the productivity of our land and the standard of food production on his farms. Think of what the Grosvenor Group has done in the moorlands and peatlands of the north-west—it is a protector of our environment and has supported our natural environment and increased the ecosystem.
Secondly, do the Government think for a moment that either of those two people are going to go to bed worried about the IHT change? No, they are not. They will dodge it, much like many of the well-heeled business people always do with taxes. The people who will bear the brunt of the Labour party’s tax policies are small farms—family farms—that do not have a huge amount of capital. When we try to tax and demand liquidity from an illiquid source, we force people to fire sale their capital. It will not work. We have to understand the economics.
The risks are real. In Needham Market, Hopkins Homes built the St George estate at the base of a hill in an old disused quarry close to sea level, and right next to an area considered at high risk of flooding.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Patrick Spencer
I will not, because I do not have long.
In Framlingham, developments either side of Station road have increased the risk of surface flow in an area that is, again, at high risk of flooding. All these places were hugely impacted by Storm Babet, and I believe the impact was made exponentially worse by huge housing developments cluttering our countryside. Between 2001 and 2021, Framlingham’s population increased by 1,200, which is nearly 50%. The population in Debenham increased by 16%. Great Blakenham has more than doubled in size. If we continue to use the Suffolk countryside to solve our housing crisis, the consequences will be disastrous.
Josh MacAlister (Whitehaven and Workington) (Lab)
I am delighted to have the chance to speak in this important debate about rural affairs. I will focus my remarks on farming. West Cumbria is home to hundreds of farmers, primarily cattle and upland sheep farmers. Sheep are ubiquitous in Cumbria: for every Cumbrian, there are five sheep. Farmers are rightly very proud of our Herdies, Rough Fells and Swaledales, as evidence by the closely fought competitions at many local agricultural shows. I have kept the peace by managing to avoid taking part in any judging to date.
I want to make three straightforward points, the first of which is about the relationship between farming and nature recovery. I want us, as a Government, to back farmers—especially those in iconic landscapes like the western lakes—who are leading nature recovery not as an alternative to food security but as a prerequisite for it. Across 40 square miles of the upper Wasdale and Ennerdale fells and commons, farmers have banded together to form the West Lakeland community interest company. Will and Louise Rawlings, Richard Maxwell, Julius and Kirsten Manduell, Kevin and Yvonne Holliday and their daughter Vicky, Sue Lister and many others are working together in innovative ways to ensure the long-term stability of traditional, nature-friendly farming and land management.
My constituency is also home to the Wild Ennerdale partnership, one of the UK’s largest rewilding projects. The vision is to protect this remote valley, in partnership with farmers. It is a breathtaking place to visit, so please do not share that secret beyond these four walls. People such as Rachel Oakley, Gareth Browning, Richard and his Galloways, and all the volunteers and partner staff from the National Trust, Forestry England, United Utilities and Natural England have made it a reality. I want the Government to do more to empower such models of nature recovery in partnership with farmers.
The second point is about the phasing out of the basic payments system. Despite the incredibly difficult financial backdrop, I welcome the Government’s £5 billion commitment to support farmers over the next two years, including the largest amount ever for sustainable food production and nature protection. That contrasts sharply with the chaotic changes to payments and the growth of a highly bureaucratic system under the previous Government. I have heard the concerns from farmers about the phasing out of the delinked basic payment scheme. I want the Government to ensure that the future sustainable farming incentive and countryside stewardship rates mitigate the impact on farmers who had planned for delinked payments up to the end of 2028.
The third point is about the inheritance tax changes. Many farmers have expressed to me their anger about wealthy individuals buying up agricultural land to avoid paying inheritance tax, and how that is forcing up land prices so that young farmers can no longer afford it. The Government’s changes seek to address that and are likely to affect only a very small number of estates in my constituency. I know that Ministers actively engage with farmers, and Government Members are very proud that Labour now represents many of the UK’s rural communities. [Interruption.] I almost intervened on the shadow Secretary of State, who wanted to trade sizes of majorities. I held back from making a further intervention at that point, so I will ignore the hectoring. I ask Ministers to consider some form of transitional support for those who will pass down their farms in the coming seven years, and who may now be caught out by changes announced in the Budget.
Finally, I invite the Minister to come to west Cumbria and meet some of our brilliant farmers, as the Secretary of State has already done, to see at first hand the really important work they are doing and the important place they have in the fabric of our community.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Members who made their maiden speeches earlier. I thought they were all excellent, although I obviously take issue with anyone who does not think that North Shropshire is the best place to be an MP. North Shropshire is very rural and is inhabited by some of the best people you will ever meet. I like to spend my Saturdays and Friday afternoons knocking on their doors and asking them what they think. What they think is that they were taken for granted by the previous Government for many, many years, but I fear they are concerned the new Government are about to repeat that trick. I strongly urge them not to.
Farming is the backbone of the economy in places like North Shropshire. Whether farming arable land or dairy herds, people have had an incredibly challenging time, not just because of the phasing out of the basic payment scheme and the botched transition to the sustainable farming incentive, but because farmers with breeding herds trying to export to Europe have been badly let down by the botched Brexit deal. There is no timetable on the horizon for a phytosanitary agreement to resolve that issue; I urge the Government to act at pace to resolve it for farmers who need to export abroad.
The changes to the inheritance tax threshold have been very badly communicated to farmers. According to the Government’s figures, 288 farms in North Shropshire will be affected. Many of the farmers have been in touch with me, and they are extremely concerned, because they need more support not higher tax. If those farmers are wrong, I think the Government need to accept that their communication with them needs to be a great deal better, because at present they are very concerned. I urge the Government not to adopt a high-handed tone but to listen to and engage with them.
Farmers are also concerned because of flooding. They have had an extremely challenging time, with 18 months of continuous wet weather. Many in my constituency who lost a whole field or a larger area last year are still unable to re-till following an appalling October, but in Shropshire we have not been eligible for either the farming recovery fund or the frequently flooded allowance, although many of my constituents are underwater, reliably, every single year. I therefore urge the Government, when they look at flood defence spending, to consider those who are being clobbered by the weather year in, year out but have so far been ineligible to receive the support that they need to recover.
I also urge the Government to think about how the sustainable farming incentive might be used to encourage farmers to hold water upstream. An hon. Member—I apologise for forgetting which one—mentioned reservoirs; I urge the Government to consider building that issue into their plans, so that water can be managed effectively for the farmers who have had such an appalling time over the last 18 months.
Healthcare is problematic in rural areas. Because ours are not big university hospitals, it is difficult to attract staff to come and work in them—they are not necessarily looking at a glittering career investigating all sorts of exciting conditions—which means our health services are much worse than those elsewhere in the country. When I was elected, the problem of ambulance waiting times was the top issue that people raised on the doorstep, and it remains awful. October was the third worst month on record for handover delays at West Midlands ambulance service. Last week one of my constituents had to wait 24 hours in pain on a plastic chair before being diagnosed with heart difficulties. Every month over 2,000 patients spend more than 12 hours in the A&E departments of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.
We must address the important issue of the recruitment and retention of health staff in rural areas. Obviously, the Budget has raised the question of how healthcare providers will handle the increased NICs. That is probably an issue for a separate debate, but I urge those in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to liaise with their colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care and discuss how we can get staff into rural areas and ensure that people have the same outcomes as those in the rest of the country, because at present they are being poorly served.
People need to have access to healthcare, as well as education and work opportunities, but transport is a huge problem, and that is killing off the high street. According to the jobcentre in Oswestry, the single biggest issue is the inability of workers to get back into work because public transport is so poor that they cannot access a place of work. Shropshire has lost 63% of its bus miles since 2015, while the national average is 19%. That will give Members some idea of how difficult it is for us. In the Budget, the Government did not mention public transport investment in rural areas. I strongly urge the Minister to address that with his colleagues and, in particular, to consider really good schemes such as the Oswestry-Gobowen railway line, and the desperate public transport desert that is Market Drayton.
I have very little time, so I will just say this. The Government must make sure that the shared rural network is delivered and is effective, but if it is not, they must ensure that people can roam between networks. Local councils must be fairly funded so that the cost of delivering services over a vast area is reflected in the funding settlements that they receive. When it comes to healthcare, transport and digital services, rural areas are struggling, and we must have—
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
Let me begin by paying tribute to our rural communities, on this Armistice Day, for their efforts in both the principal wars of the last century. We know that those wars shaped our rural communities. They asked a lot of the countryside, and indeed the farming that we see today was very much impacted and shaped by the events of the conflict at the beginning of the last century.
I thank the Government for holding this important debate on rural affairs. As we have heard, there is a rich seam of topics to discuss, including public transport, connectivity, the appalling state of rural NHS dentistry and the depletion of the wildlife in our countryside. Later this evening, the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) has an important Adjournment debate on mental health in rural areas, and I congratulate her on securing it.
I want to talk briefly about rural crime, because many of us will have constituents who have been affected by it. What I have found most shocking recently, in Macclesfield and in Cheshire as a whole, are the potential links to the war in Ukraine. Since 2022 there has been an increase in, particularly, the theft of GPS units from Cheshire’s farm vehicles by organised gangs from eastern Europe, and the resulting insurance claims for the units increased by 137% last year alone. Each one of those units costs a staggering £20,000. Farmers use them to guide tractors, combine harvesters and other machinery to improve accuracy. It is now feared that they are being stolen and reconfigured as hardware in guidance systems being used in war in the other side of the continent.
Cheshire’s police and crime commissioner has specifically drawn attention to the direct correlation between the vast increase in thefts and the start of the war in Ukraine. I commend the Government for instituting a cross-governmental rural crime strategy, but, along with other Members who spoke about this earlier, I call on them to do more to improve the security of essential farm equipment by working with manufacturers, because that is a practical measure that we can take. We need not only immobilisation technology but forensic marking on this gear, so that it can be tracked through the labyrinth of organised criminal gangs.
I hope, having drawn attention to this practical and salient issue, that we have a chance not only to stop the rural crime that is damaging our communities and costing them a great deal of money—I believe that more than £4 million was shelled out by National Farmers Union insurers last year—but to stop the illegal flow of systems fuelling a war in another part of our continent.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Some 88% of my constituency is hill, wood or farmland. It is the “Vale of Little Dairies”, in Thomas Hardy’s phrase. It is a mosaic of farms, both family-owned and estate and many of them tenanted, punctuated by villages and market towns. I would willingly swap my inbox with that of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley)—who is no longer in the Chamber—because her constituency, like those of many Labour Members, seems to be full of farmers who are, with a spring in their step, welcoming the wonderful, halcyon field that the Government are offering them.
Let me make again a point that I made in an intervention earlier. I am still at a loss as to how farmers are supposed to be rejoicing, as we are told they are by so many Labour Members, with all this record investment and expenditure in rural areas, when they are being told by the Secretary of State that they must do more with less. You can have one or the other, Madam Deputy Speaker, but you cannot have both.
Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have spoken very authoritatively about the taxation changes. I am fundamentally opposed to what the Government are trying to do because of the damage that it will cause, in the long term, in constituencies such as mine and many others—particularly, but not exclusively, in the south-west. It also concerns me that many Labour Members have been told that the money raised will give them an oncology centre in every constituency, and that other wonderful things are going to happen. In fact, this is just a round of drinks when it comes the amount of money that it will generate in taxation for what may be required by the health service or by education, so I say to the House, “Please do not fall for that old chestnut.”
The Minister and I worked very closely together on the Agriculture Act 2020 and on trade issues. Now is the opportunity—I have been very clear that we had opportunities over the last few years, but they were not delivered for a whole variety of reasons, including covid, Ukraine and other things that we all know about—to have some serious, grown-up thinking about rural-proofing policies, because, as others have mentioned, the delivery of public services in our rural areas is more expensive. Our populations are sparser, and our communities are further flung. As the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) said, we do not have big teaching hospitals and so forth. The Home Office needs to give proper consideration to rural-proofing the funding formula for rural policing, and likewise with the fire service. We have the rural services delivery grant, and I hope that the Minister and his departmental colleagues are strongly making the case to both the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government that the rural services delivery grant is vital for enabling rural local government to deliver the services that our communities are looking for.
In an earlier contribution to the debate, reference was made to the entirely urban-centric rubric of Environment Agency funding decisions when it comes to flooding. It effectively boils down to how many chimneys benefit from the investment. The larger the community—by definition, the more urban or metropolitan—the more likely they are to be successful in a bid, compared with a scheme that will benefit many hundreds of acres of prime farmland but possibly only 200 or 300 households. There needs to be rural-proofing.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
My hon. Friend is hitting the nail on the head. In my speech, I mentioned that Tadcaster is unable to get rid of the surface water. That affects a few businesses, but the whole town is destroyed by those businesses not being able to reopen and having insurance problems, despite the fact that there are not enough houses under the Environment Agency’s plan. The point that the Environment Agency has to take notice of is, where does the economy build from?
Simon Hoare
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Then we can think about the impact on insurance premiums, which will close businesses and put householders out of the insurance market, with the exception of the scheme that the previous Government introduced. All these things have knock-on effects.
I think the Minister and his departmental colleagues have sympathy with the point I want to make. Across Government—it is not just his Department—the funding formula and the rubric that decides where these things go need to have a far more digital, contemporary account of the challenges in delivering services in our rural areas. It is an issue that I have banged on about in this place in the nearly 10 years that I have served my communities of North Dorset, and I will continue to talk about it because that is the right thing to do. I hope that there is sympathy for that argument on both sides of the House.
Many Members have referred to access to housing. A lot of my constituents have invested in rental properties and so on, but we all know that quite a lot of housing in rural areas is older. It could be in a conservation area, it could be listed or it could be thatched—it could be all of those things. People are trying to meet the EPC regulations for rental properties, which is putting huge, artificial and urban-centric pressure on the rural rental housing market.
The Prime Minister recently launched a very welcome initiative about skills. Again, I urge that a bespoke channel of work is carved out that looks at how we skill young people in rural areas. We suffer from a young person’s diaspora too often: the elderly retire to an area, and the young move away. Property prices go up, and people will only come back as and when they able to inherit something—that is, of course, on the presumption that the Treasury has not taken everything by that point and that the only thing they are able to inherit is a very small part of the family grave plot, although that might be taxed as well. I would urge a ruralisation of this area.
I will mention two other things, both of which begin with “d”. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned dentistry. There have been too many nascent plans for a revival and renaissance of dentistry over the years. For reasons that I cannot understand, none has come to fruition, save for the entirely skewed and bogus funding formula for dentists. All Governments wed themselves to doing something; I just hope that something will be done. The other issue is driving tests. It is very hard to get a driving test in rural areas, which deprives young people of access to work, and to colleges and learning.
In this debate on rural affairs, it is not just about the proposals for changing the way farmers are taxed. It is about the whole mosaic and rich tapestry of rural life, of which this Government currently find themselves the custodians. Historically, the Labour party has always been urban-centric, but it now has some rural seats. I hope that the Front Benchers listen to rural Members, hear the concerns that we, too, are hearing, and actually make some progress towards making life in our rural areas a little better.
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his remarks, and I particularly welcome his warm words on cleaning up our rivers, growing the rural economy and investing in flood defences. My constituents in Bolton West are extremely proud of our rivers, streams, waterways and lakes. They bring life to our countryside, and play a crucial role in preserving our biodiversity and fighting climate change—a danger all too real, given the increase in flooding and wildfires on the moors in my constituency. With that in mind, I wish to focus on access to our waterways and our countryside.
I am sure that colleagues will agree that I have the pleasure of representing the most beautiful constituency in the country, with Rivington, Winter Hill and the west Pennine moors all on our doorstep. That is why I am proud to say that the Labour party has a long history and proven track record of giving people freedom to enjoy our countryside, including through the National Parks Act and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Indeed, the House will note that 2024 is the 75th anniversary of this seminal piece of legislation, and that Labour Governments also introduced the groundbreaking Countryside Act 1968 and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. However, more than 20 years after the CROW Act was passed, access to nature is under threat.
The benefits of access to both the countryside and our waterways are well documented. Physical inactivity is associated with one in six deaths in the UK; according to the “Outdoors For All” campaign, it is estimated to cost us £7.4 billion every year. Obesity costs the UK £58 billion, and poor mental health costs the UK between £53 billion and £56 billion. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to get 3.5 million more people active by 2030 through their “Get Active” strategy and, likewise, their commitment to give the public access to green and blue spaces within a 15-minute walk of home through the environmental improvement plan, which is highly commendable. Currently, however, 19.6 million people do not enjoy that privilege. I draw the Minister’s attention to the “Outdoors For All” campaign, which is run by a coalition of 51 organisations, ranging from the National Trust and sporting national governing bodies such as Paddle UK to the British Mountaineering Council and the Wildlife Trust. The campaign’s excellent manifesto calls for an extension of the public’s open access rights to the countryside and to water.
When it comes to recreation, the UK is truly a pioneer both in and on the water. Indeed, 7.5 million people were estimated to have gone paddling in 2023. Millions more row, sail and swim. However, access to our nation’s waterways is woefully inadequate compared with almost every nation in Europe and around the globe. The current policy of pursuing piecemeal voluntary access arrangements is plainly unworkable, because a river might cut through thousands of properties. How can one authority be expected to negotiate simultaneously with thousands of landowners and on behalf of the public? How can local arrangements provide the same clarity that our rights-of-way network grants walkers, given that arrangements may differ from river to river, boundary to boundary, and riverbank to riverbank? With more people than ever paddling and swimming for health and wellbeing, we have to reconsider our approach. The Secretary of State has repeatedly committed to expanding responsible access, and the Labour manifesto commits to nine new river walks. I would very much welcome more information on those in due course. It is high time for a White Paper on access to nature, including on our waterways. I hope that the Minister will consider that, and I would be happy to meet him or her to discuss it further.
I am aware of intensive lobbying by some landowners who see access to water or the countryside as an infringement on property rights. To those people I say: these spaces belong to all of us. A strong code of responsible access—such as the paddlers’ code, developed by Paddle UK and Natural England—would mitigate harm and disturbance to our precious environment. After all, look at all the work that recreational users, including paddlers, swimmers, rowers, anglers and sailors, have done to campaign for cleaner water, to clear plastic pollution, and to tackle invasive non-native species. In many cases, recreational users are the custodians of our nation’s waterways. Our ire should be directed at those responsible for the industrial-scale pollution in the water sector, and for the systemic run-off of chemicals into our waterways.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend—like many Members across the House, I am sure—support the idea of a bathing status award for water quality?
Phil Brickell
Yes, I think there is considerable merit to making sure that not only our inland waters but our coastal waters are accredited with viable bathing status.
That brings me to my second topic. For years, under the previous Conservative Government, water companies have been pumping sewage into our rivers and lakes with little fear of consequences. We live in a country where parents think twice about letting their children surf, swim or paddle, for fear of them contracting all manner of diseases, some of them life-threatening, and that is frankly unacceptable. Surfers against Sewage has done tremendous work in holding polluters to account, and I draw the Minister’s attention to its “End Sewage Pollution” manifesto.
Since 2019, under the Conservatives, untreated sewage has been discharged into our waters over 1 million times, and that requires real punishment for those who flout the rules. To that end, I very much welcome the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which I hope will introduce new penalties for water companies and block bonuses for water bosses, who have all too often turned a blind eye to the damage that their firms have done to our waterways. To conclude, I ask the Minister for three simple things on behalf of my constituents: clean up our water; give us access to it; and invest to tackle flooding.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
We will go down to a five-minute time limit after the next speaker. I call Graham Leadbitter.
Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)
First, I commend the maiden speakers in the House today. There have been some excellent maiden speeches. I particularly liked the reference by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) to Tolkien, of whom I am a big fan, but today we are talking less about the bounteousness of the Hobbit’s Shire and more about needing a wizard to figure out how the Budget is good for farmers.
Like many Members across the House representing rural areas, I have received significant correspondence from those on family farms, and from industry representatives such as the National Farmers Union of Scotland. The changes to inheritance tax and agricultural property relief have sent a wave of despair through the farming community, given the impact on family farms. Labour Members have referred to farmers having time to do financial planning, but significant sums of money will have to be put aside; if we were talking about pensions, we would say that people needed 10, 15 or 20 years to change their financial plans in that way.
The NFUS has given the example of a family farm worth £4 million. The vast majority of that value is tied up in farm buildings, machinery and livestock. A family member inheriting the farm could be liable for a £600,000 tax bill—a demand enforceable by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, with £60,000 due within six months. Let us be clear that for many people, the only way to cover that would be to sell off buildings, machinery or stock. That may inherently make the farm financially unviable and put the whole business at risk of failure.
A farm owner may choose to protect their family farm assets by selling off tenanted land, creating huge financial uncertainty for tenant farmers, and giving many cause to question whether it is worth continuing in farming. Food security is national security, but these measures are increasing uncertainty and insecurity for hard-working farming families—and in most farms, the whole family is working it together. A constituent wrote to me to say that APR is not a loophole, as has been suggested, but a targeted and necessary relief designed to support multi-generational businesses, food production and economic growth.
A second issue of real significance to my constituency is whisky tax. That might not immediately jump to mind when we think about rural affairs, but the vast majority of the 48 distilleries in my constituency are in rural areas. The supply chain for those whisky distilleries is in rural areas; these are rural jobs. If the increase in whisky tax reduces sales, that reduces investment. Those 48 distilleries range from big corporates such as Diageo through to small independents, and even a community-run distillery; I recently had the pleasure of being at its opening. The supply chain includes farmers producing grains—this is a double whammy for farmers in my constituency, as many of them produce grain for the distilleries—as well as mechanical engineers, process engineers, hauliers, maltsters, plumbers, joiners, gardeners, tour guides and those working in retail and hospitality. All those jobs are in rural areas, and they are a lifeline source of well-paid, good employment for many rural communities in Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey.
A third impact that I want to touch on is forestry. Here I can maybe throw the Minister a bone, having had a bit of a go about the first two issues. On forestry, I think we have a lot in common. We want to see more housing built; I am very supportive of that. I also support the need to see progress on sustainable aviation fuel. Both of those rely on significant investment in forestry. There is a serious issue about the availability of new wood beyond 2035, and if we are to achieve progress on sustainable aviation fuel and house building, that needs to be in the balance. Forestry needs to be in balance with the rest of our agricultural land needs. I urge the Minister to commit to a statement on the future of forestry beyond 2035, in order to support those two objectives, which, as I say, I believe we share.
Graeme Downie (Dunfermline and Dollar) (Lab)
I congratulate those who made their maiden speech this afternoon. My constituency of Dunfermline and Dollar has a significant rural area, particularly through west Fife and Clackmannanshire. While rural areas often face different challenges from urban areas, the concerns are often the same. They include access to health, education, transport and other public services, so while this debate is about rural affairs, we must always be careful to ensure that we tackle the different challenges faced in rural areas with thoughtful consideration and sensitivity, and without creating division with those who live in urban and suburban areas.
I begin by mentioning concerns that farmers in my community have raised about changes in the Budget to agricultural property relief. Along with five Scottish Labour colleagues and Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, I was recently able to meet NFU Scotland and have a constructive conversation on that and other issues. It was disappointing, however, that no one from the Scottish National party was able to attend. Constructive engagement, rather than the often misleading and divisive rhetoric we have seen from some Conservative Members, will always be appreciated by our farming communities. I am awaiting further information from NFUS, but I believe that it understands the intention of the policy that has been announced, and our eagerness to work with it and others to support Scottish farmers.
My constituency includes former coalmining villages such as High Valleyfield, Oakley and Blairhall. Their rurality, along with high levels of deprivation, presents unique challenges. Bus services are irregular and unreliable, making access to healthcare difficult. It can take more than an hour to get to Dunfermline by bus, a journey that takes just 15 minutes by car. Similarly, without a car it is next to impossible to access train or bus services to cities such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, while the lack of services after 6 pm in some areas means that park-and-ride options are not viable for those who want to commute by public transport.
Living in rural areas presents a further difficulty in accessing health services. Buses to either Forth Valley hospital near Falkirk or Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy can take more than an hour, so getting to an appointment at a specific time without a car is difficult and very disruptive to day-to-day life. The community in High Valleyfield experienced this just over a year ago, when the breast screening van was withdrawn. People were then required to travel to Dunfermline, a journey of more than two hours each way. Sadly, I heard of women of all ages no longer making their appointments, and I do not think anyone in this House would want that. At a recent surgery in Dollar, I was told of the incredible challenges in accessing hospital transport services; the excessive bureaucracy and other barriers disadvantage people living in rural areas.
Although failing transport infrastructure causes challenges, digital infrastructure is similarly problematic and is not the panacea for accessibility that it is sometimes heralded as being. Rural areas suffer from delays in getting broadband infrastructure. Openreach was very excited to bring cabinet service to the village of Blairhall in my constituency. Everyone was looking forward to it, and it was completed—other than for seven houses on one street, where Openreach decided it was not commercially viable to introduce the service. The SNP’s R100 programme, already delayed and over budget, will eventually get to delivering this upgrade, but not until 2026 or 2027.
After the pandemic, increasing numbers of tourists have sought to take advantage of the beauty to be found in rural Scotland. Tourists increasingly visit Culross, a village in my constituency where movies and TV shows such as “Outlander” were filmed. As we approach Christmas, the House might be interested to know that much of the film “Christmas in Scotland” was filmed in this beautiful village. But, of course, this brings its own pressures, as thousands of visitors and hundreds of tour buses visit Culross each week. I am delighted that Fife council is working with the excellent and very active Culross community council on these issues, but we must balance the needs of visitors with the needs of, and impact on, the local community.
I could go on and on about the fantastic rural communities in my constituency, but I will end with my commitment to continuing to champion and advocate for the different needs, priorities and considerations of our rural communities throughout my time in this House.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
There are many issues I could raise in such an important debate on rural affairs, but in their Budget a couple of weeks ago, the Labour Government introduced a new threat on such a scale that it simply must be the topic on which I open my remarks. As I said in last week’s Budget debate, the changes to agricultural property relief are a threat to family farms and rural communities across the country, including in Mid Buckinghamshire. I cannot believe that Mid Buckinghamshire farmers are so different from the farmers found in Labour-held constituencies, but many of the farmers who have contacted me are absolutely petrified about what the change means for the future of their farm. They tell me that they may even have to sell up to a third of their farm to meet their inheritance tax bill. There is no way to sugar-coat this: it will be the end of British family farming if these changes are allowed to go through.
When I gave my maiden speech on Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill in the last Parliament, the now Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, who was then a shadow Minister, kindly said in summing up that I was “every Cambridge leftie’s nightmare”, and I agree. I gently suggest that, if he does not talk to farmers, to the NFU and to the people who are petrified about what these changes will mean, he may well become the nightmare of every farmer in this country.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
It may be that I am being generous, but I think this is happening because Labour Members have a patchy understanding of the issue. It is easy for those who do not understand rural Britain or agriculture to assume that assets and income are the same thing, but my hon. Friend will know that many farmers with considerable paper wealth do not actually make that much money.
Greg Smith
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that British farming does not operate on mega margins. Our farmers do not have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds in the bank. They operate on such tight margins that, even if we play devil’s advocate and accept the Government’s argument—which, for the record, I do not—most farmers in this position will struggle to pay a tax bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds over a 10-year period. The margins simply are not there. Of course, there are many things that we can and should do to increase the profitability of farming, but it is fanciful to pretend that a 10-year payback period would be anywhere near enough. It would symbolise the end of British farming.
Of course, that was not the only threat to British farming in the Budget. There was the attack on basic equipment such as pick-up trucks, whereby farmers face paying an extra £5,000 simply for having the audacity to want back seats for their children. Then there is the carbon tax, which will see the cost of fertiliser rise by between £50 and £75 a tonne, which will have a detrimental impact on either farmers’ margins or food prices, or potentially both. Across the country, either outcome would be devastating.
Other Members have spoken about rural crime, about which I too am incredibly frustrated. I intervened to ask the Secretary of State about this subject. After being lucky enough to come quite high in the 2022 private Member’s Bill ballot, I spent two and a half years promoting my Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, which requires immobilisers on quad bikes and high-standard forensic marking, including GPS units, on agricultural equipment. It requires the passage of a statutory instrument that the then Policing Minister and now shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), said was ready to go when the general election was called, but it was thwarted by the Dissolution of Parliament.
The Act was passed with the Labour party’s support. Labour Members did not howl it down or attack it on Second Reading, in Committee or on Third Reading in either House. It is not as if the Act is in any way controversial. We just need the statutory instrument to be passed to give the police the powers they need. Police officers like Superintendent Andy Huddleston, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on rural crime, say that these powers will make a huge difference.
I have raised this matter with the Home Secretary and the Leader of the House. I doubt that this simple SI would cause any controversy for any party or any Member of this House. Why can the Government not introduce the statutory instrument? I take their desire to tackle rural crime at face value, so why do they not get the ball rolling on passing this legislation? Every time I meet a police officer from Thames Valley Police or anywhere I go in the country, the first thing they ask is, “What is happening with your Act?” I cannot answer that question, because I just do not know the reason for the Government’s delay. I appeal to the Minister to work with his Home Office colleagues to find a way to get the Act functioning.
Finally, this Government’s approach to planning and energy is causing devastation across our rural communities. My constituency has been plagued by so many ground-mounted solar applications—the largest one is Rosefield in the Claydons. These projects take away agricultural land, take away the ability to produce food and in many cases displace farmers, including tenant farmers. And what for? It is an inefficient technology that requires thousands of acres of agricultural land, when other technologies, such as small modular reactors, which require the equivalent of just two football pitches, can produce far more energy. I urge the farming Minister or the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to go into battle with the Energy Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister on these planning changes, so that we can have a sensible approach to our countryside and keep it for what it is best at: the production of food.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
We have had an excellent and varied debate that perfectly illustrates the variety and colour of rural life in our country today. I want to concentrate on one aspect of rural life that blights the lives of people who live in rural north Cumbria, in my constituency, and across all of the UK: rural crime. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) on his work on this issue. I will certainly support him in trying to ensure that that statutory instrument is brought forward.
Rural crime, be it sheep rustling, fly-tipping or the theft of vehicles or equipment, has exactly the same impact on the communities and individuals it affects: it has a huge financial repercussion on everyone whose livelihoods rely on livestock and machinery for the generation of their income. It leaves rural communities feeling vulnerable and fearful for their personal safety. However, despite that financial and personal cost, it is a fact that rural crime rose under the last Government.
NFU Mutual’s figures show that there was a 4.3% increase in crime in 2023, pushing the cost of rural crime to a shocking figure of over £52 million. In my own county of Cumbria, rural theft cost an estimated £815,000—a rise of 12% on the previous year. It is clear that criminal gangs have been able to take advantage of the holes left in rural frontline policing, as a direct result of cuts to rural police forces under the last Government, to target farmyards and fields across Britain.
Rural crime is no longer the preserve of the opportunist thief. Instead, we now see internationally organised criminal activity, with gangs that target high value farm machinery and GPS kits, knowing that they can be sold all over the world. That degree of serious organised crime demands a serious, organised response, and I am pleased that it is this Government that are delivering that response in the form of a cross-governmental rural crime strategy.
In Cumbria, our new Labour police, fire and crime commissioner is committed to building on the work of our dedicated rural crime team, which recently marked its first anniversary. During that year, the team recovered stolen property worth £820,000, cut quad bike thefts by 10% and made dozens of arrests. More importantly, that same team engaged directly with rural communities, making over 200 visits to victims of rural crime.
Sir John Hayes
If I can be helpful to the hon. Lady, the critical thing is to get the police funding formula reviewed. It disadvantages counties like Cumbria and Lincolnshire, and has done for years. No Government, Labour or Conservative, has dealt with that. Will she join me in writing to the Minister, and perhaps to the Treasury, to suggest that we do just that in order to prioritise rural areas like hers and mine?
Ms Minns
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. As we have heard, funding for rural communities affects not just crime and policing, but the availability of GPs, healthcare and dentistry. If anyone on the Conservative Benches would like to explain to my constituents why they have to go on a 100 mile round trip to register with an NHS dentist, I would happily take that intervention.
On the point about personalised engagement with rural communities, I draw the House’s attention to the dedication of one particular rural police officer in my constituency: PC Susan Holliday. I should declare that Susan and I have been friends for over 50 years, and she has spent 37 of those years as a special constable in Cumbria constabulary, clocking up over 5,000 hours in her own time in the last decade alone, and exhausting every possible long-service award available to her as a special constable and that she is entitled to. Herself a farmer, Susan was integral to the setting up of Cumbria constabulary’s farm watch scheme, and she is well known to the rural communities across the north of my constituency.
Sadly, the excellent work of officers like Susan was too often undermined by the cuts to frontline policing that we saw in 14 years of chaotic Conservative Government. Those 14 years saw the closure of rural police stations and the diversion of officers away from their rural beats to plug the gaps in policing in our towns and city centres. It is not before time that we finally have a Government that will back our frontline rural police officers with a rural crime strategy. That strategy will increase police patrols in rural areas, has tougher measures to clamp down on antisocial behaviour and has stronger laws to prevent farm theft, fly-tipping and drug dealing. I am delighted that this Government will deliver the rural crime strategy that communities like mine in north Cumbria so desperately need.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I live on our family farm and declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers Union. As most Members are aware, I represent a rural constituency with a thriving agrifood sector. We grow it, we package it and we sell it. I dare say that most right hon. and hon. Members in this House will have sampled what Strangford has to offer. For instance, the potatoes grown in my constituency go all over Great Britain. I am pleased that those potatoes are a protected product; they were protected under EU law when we were in the EU, and they are protected now as well.
Lakeland Dairies supplies milk to London hotels and to aeroplanes. My neighbour’s farm supplies milk to that dairy, whose processing plant is a huge employer in my largest town, Newtownards. Willowbrook Foods and Mash Direct supply convenient prepacked goods to shops throughout the UK and further afield. Rich Sauces produces condiments that are shipped globally. All of those local business are doing our national business, and we are all the better for it. Sometimes it is better to promote those goods within the great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland together, so when the Minister sums up, will he give me some ideas about how that can be done? I know he is committed to that, but I am keen for Hansard to have it on the record.
The rural economy in Northern Ireland is our mainstay. Our focus in this place is not simply to allow it to survive, but to allow it to thrive further. All of those businesses have the potential to do more. Farming is the biggest industry in Northern Ireland, with 75% of land used for agriculture. There are some 25,000 farm businesses in Northern Ireland and some 48,000 jobs, which provide £1.7 billion of value added to the Northern Ireland economy, which is 3.5% of the total gross value added. With great respect to colleagues on the Conservative Benches and across the Chamber, the equivalent figure for the whole of the UK is 2%, so for us in Northern Ireland, what happens with agriculture is crucial and critical.
The gross output of agriculture in 2020 was £2.2 billon, while the gross output of food and drinks processing was £5.4 billion. The ripple effect is even greater, estimated at almost £5 billion when we account for the indirect contribution to a wide variety of sectors, including construction and hospitality.
My party will continue to ask for the remaining problems with the Northern Ireland protocol to be addressed. Again that is not the Minister’s direct responsibility, but I ask him to pass that on to the relevant Minister. The problems include the fact that because of state aid restrictions, businesses operating in primary agriculture and horticulture, fish processing, aquaculture and bio-based fuels are not eligible to apply for the agrifood investment initiative, which has been designed to support businesses in Northern Ireland who have additional shipping and transportation costs, and costs due to economy of scale, that make competition more difficult. I would really appreciate a response on that point. I like to be constructive and positive if I can in my comments. There are still businesses that cannot apply for the support due to the restrictions and that must be tackled. I look to the Minister to liaise with Cabinet colleagues to secure UK food security by securing agrifood in Northern Ireland.
The Minister knows that I respect him greatly, but I have to say that the Government have got the inheritance tax issue wrong. Shrinking farms by requiring them to sell 20% of the farm land to pay inheritance tax is not the way to promote food security or indeed to allow us to be self-sustaining. I repeat my calls for a rethink of this brutal tax reform, which actively harms not simply our farming community but anyone who buys British goods in the shop. Over the weekend a local estate agent told me—I am not making this up—that multiple farms have already requested a valuation to be carried out of the fields that they will not farm but keep to sell to pay the tax bills. There is already a knock-on effect.
The Secretary of State kindly made me an offer, and I will take him up on it. I have already contacted the Ulster Farmers’ Union to put the appointment in place. Northern Ireland leads the way in farming and the message is clear: release the chokehold and support us or our land will go for planning houses, and we will give up family farms treasured for centuries to pay the highway man. As one farmer said to me, “They aren’t coming for the family silver as we don’t have any. We only have the ability to grow food and they are taking that not from our family alone, but from every family in this United Kingdom.” That is wrong.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
I will never get tired of saying how proud I am to represent rural communities in York Outer, especially when it comes to food production. From carrots to chicken, or parsnips to pigs, if there is a perfect place in the country to see your dinner go from farm to fork, look no further than York.
Now then, on the topic of Yorkshire folk, we are a hard-working bunch. I am a prime example, trying to squeeze my Yorkshire dialect into Hansard. In all seriousness, there are few harder workers than our farmers, famed for hard graft, which is why I have been spending so much time engaging with them across York Outer. I have been to several farms in my constituency, and I have met my local NFU, but I know that supporting rural communities means focusing on the longer term, not just the here and now. That is why I will focus my comments on flooding, biosecurity and mental health—three vital cross-party issues that we can tackle together.
It is well known that we suffer from flooding in York, with two rivers—the Foss and the Ouse—in our city. When they overflow, they devastate communities and crops. The use of agricultural land is a hot topic in the House, but in York persistent flooding is a big driver of the loss of land. I will depart from party politics for a second, because I know that my predecessors in York from all parties have done a good job locally on flooding, and I intend to do the same. That is why I have already had some positive chats with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy).
Our Government are doing good work on flooding. I welcome the £60 million that the Secretary of State rapidly released for communities last month, and the investment of more than £2.4 billion over two years in flood resilience. The issue with flooding in the past is that we have needed a quicker release of funds, and I hope that will be a priority for the Government.
The biggest issue for me nationally is biosecurity. This week, I will visit the Animal and Plant Health Agency in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for food security. Whether it is the new H5N5 variant of avian influenza—which is incredibly contagious —the recent outbreak of bluetongue or African swine fever, these are all real risks that our farmers tell me they are worrying about. That matters to me too, not least with recent avian influenza cases reported in Yorkshire.
I had a wonderful bacon sarnie at Wilson’s farm. From the butter to the bap to the bacon, it was all locally produced, and that sent me an important message. The Government must buy local when it comes to procurement. School dinners must be local. We must promote British farming, including in this place where we could purchase more British farming products.
We also need to do more to end farmwashing. Some of the farmers in my patch were telling me about quite deceptive food packaging, with red, white and blue, and tractor logos that narrowly get through advertising regulations, only for customers to turn the back of the packet and see that the product came from a farm in Spain, Ireland or elsewhere. We have to sort that.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) on securing tonight’s Adjournment debate on farmers’ mental health. When considering the future of the NHS, it is so important that we not only fix the waiting lists and implement the reforms needed but always think of our cherished rural communities. Food security is national security, and mental health is just as important as physical health. That is why I am always willing, as all of us in this place are, to talk to farmers about what they are going through.
Rural communities voted for change earlier this year. That is why there are many Labour MPs who are hard-working advocates for their rural communities—as passionate as I am. Thankfully, the Government have had a strong start. These topics have a big impact on my constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) invited the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs to Cumbria; I invite him to stop at York along the way to discuss some of these hugely important topics. I will always be a champion for our rural communities, and I will work cross-party on many of the issues that I have mentioned.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
Rural communities form the backbone of our country. They grow the food that feeds British families, they are the custodians of our beautiful countryside, and they are home to fantastic village pubs such as the Knife & Cleaver in Houghton Conquest, the Crown in Shillington and the Anchor in Aspley Guise—a shameless plug for three of my fantastic pubs. We all know that fantastic British pubs are the heart of our villages, but I am concerned that they will now struggle to stand still, never mind invest and give youngsters the opportunity of their first job, given the Government’s choice to tax jobs and working people. Pubs across my constituency have told me of their concerns, and I told them that I would raise them today on the Floor of the House.
The problems that we face in rural communities are a world away from those faced by hon. Friends in urban areas. We suffer from similar crimes to urban areas, with particular problems around fly-tipping, wildlife crime and rural theft. Members throughout the House have spoken about those issues at length. I urge the Government to ensure that rural communities are not overlooked in favour of urban areas when they allocate police funding. That is certainly a concern of my constituents, who see police resources soaked up by the high demand in neighbouring large towns.
In parts of my constituency, the benefits of working from home are limited by poor-quality broadband, which limits the growth prospects of some of our brilliant local entrepreneurs and family businesses. Project Gigabit must be delivered at pace, and I will support any measures and efforts to do that.
Bus services are often infrequent and unreliable, and unfortunately under this Government they are getting more expensive. Inequalities extend beyond transport; access to healthcare is challenging, particularly if people cannot or do not drive. I am keen to ensure that my communities have better access to local healthcare, which is an ambition of the Government. We need to do more in this Parliament to ensure that primary care reaches into our villages and hamlets, and that no one is left without the healthcare they need because of where they live.
As the Government consider their plans to build the communities of the future, I hope they will learn from our villages. Decades—centuries, even—of sympathetic development have created communities: places that people want to live and spend time in. We must ensure that the legacy we leave for future generations includes sustainable and beautiful homes, with the right services and good access to the countryside.
Sir John Hayes
Such is my hon. Friend’s insight that he has drawn together two fundamental issues. Over-development in rural areas places immense pressure on infrastructure such as healthcare provision, as he described. Does he agree that development should be incremental, so that no community changes beyond recognition, or can no longer be served by the kind of public services that are critical to wellbeing?
Blake Stephenson
I entirely agree. A lot is said about sustainable development in planning rules. I know from my community that lots of people feel quite aggrieved by large new developments being built on the edge of villages, fundamentally changing their character. There is more work to do to ensure that our villages grow slowly and sustainably, alongside infrastructure. Lessons should be learned from the many decades of mistakes.
That brings me to another point. We must ensure that our villages are not overwhelmed by suburban dormitories. I am afraid that even though they are rural, some of my communities have been turned into dormitories by house building. People sleep there but head elsewhere to work, so they do not contribute to our local communities as they would have done in the past.
Often, at the heart of our rural communities is a group of unsung people—although they have been much mentioned today—who look after our countryside, employ local people and ensure that every single person in this country has food on their table. They are, of course, our farmers. British farmers might not always seek the spotlight—although sometimes they have shows on Amazon Prime—but without them we would be a much poorer country and our rural communities would be significantly worse off.
We should do all we can to support British farmers and nurture the next generation of them, but instead the Government are regrettably levying a spiteful family farm tax on them. I met farmers in Mid Bedfordshire recently. It is clear that the attack on family farms will force many families to sell up to developers or big international farming corporations, ripping the soul out of our rural communities. For the long-term sustainability of rural communities up and down the country, I urge the Government to reconsider the damaging family farm tax.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Before I call the next speaker, I inform the House that I am now imposing a four-minute time limit.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
I thank the Government for so guilelessly bringing forward such a broad debate allowing those of us with rural constituencies to make wide-ranging demands on behalf of the towns and villages that we represent. I look forward to further inundating Ministers’ in-trays with legions of letters about agriculture in Anstey, school buildings in Baldock and potholes in Furneux Pelham. However, before I am accused of being excessively parochial, I will address the wider systemic issues that undermine rural life in this country.
Fundamentally, the problem facing towns and villages such as those across North East Hertfordshire is that for decades almost every aspect of national life has been increasingly geared towards putting profit maximisation before the needs of our communities. Nowhere is that more evident than in our housing sector. Rural areas must deal again and again with totally unsustainable speculative developments dominated by houses designed to maximise profit, on a scale completely unrelated to local needs for organic growth.
At the same time, house prices have continued to rise—almost always far beyond the reach of those who have grown up locally—rural homelessness has risen by 40% and local facilities have declined. In one of my local towns, Buntingford, hundreds of new houses have been built, yet it has lost its youth centre, the bank, the community swimming pool, a GP surgery, a daycare centre and the local waste disposal site—those facilities are all gone. The volume of new housing is putting such strain on the infrastructure that residents are repeatedly flooded by raw sewage. I am afraid it is of little consolation that the big developers, which the Tories allowed to force through applications on appeal, have been enjoying supernormal profits as a result.
The systemic failures are not unique to rural housing. Our public transport system is next to non-existent in many villages—cutting off young adults from opportunities for work and education, and stranding older residents in loneliness and isolation—because the only bus services that ran under the Tories were those that made profits for shareholders. We expect farmers to steward our land for future generations, but they have—between the monopsonistic power of the major supermarkets and the pressure of global commodity markets—been pushed into the absurd position whereby it is increasingly impossible to make a fair living out of feeding the nation. All that points to economic policy that has consistently failed to recognise the intrinsic value that my constituents place on the rurality of their communities. For too long, economic orthodoxy that is obsessed with agglomeration and utilitarian accounting has proven incapable of recognising the social value of investing in less densely populated areas.
To conclude, given the vast change in political representation of rural areas at the recent election, the Government clearly have a unique opportunity and obligation to deliver systemic change that creates a future in which our towns, villages and hamlets thrive as communities in their own right. Ministers have made an important start with policies to refocus house building on delivering new social homes, by paving the way for re-regulation of bus services, by delivering the largest ever budget for sustainable food production, and with a clear commitment to community energy. Today, I urge them to press on further as swiftly as possible by restoring services to our towns and villages and retaining their rurality; by recognising at last that, depleted as it is, the natural capital of our countryside is the better part of the wealth of our nation; and by redirecting investment, leaning into the growth of distributed technologies and remote working, and delivering a new revolution in cottage industries to once again spread economic opportunities across places such as those I represent.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
My constituency and its neighbouring villages are defined by their green space and rurality, providing a sharp contrast to the urban west midlands next door. Our villages are home to rural enterprises and to farmers, and it is our farmers who are the lifeblood of our rural communities. Their role cannot be overstated: not only do they provide us with food security, but they contribute significantly to our local economy, and it is critical that we support them. Every single one of us relies on farmers three times a day. They are the guardians of our countryside, often working in isolated or harsh conditions, physically and in a competitive marketplace. I am delighted to be participating in the NFU’s MP fellowship scheme to better understand the pressures that farmers face.
The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State promised to protect farmers. They promised not to change inheritance rules, but then in the autumn Budget, among many other broken promises, Labour broke its pledge to farmers. It reduced reliefs and imposed inheritance tax rates on farmland, which will devastate family farms and pose a serious risk to domestic food security and food prices in our country. Not only do those changes hurt the agriculture sector and our economy, but they hurt individual farming families, with at least 249 farms affected across my constituency. I want the House to be aware of the specific concerns of two of my constituents. One wrote to me:
“This specifically targeted decision will eventually destroy family farms. It’s a mentally and physically hard industry to be in but for most has been passed on from previous generations and do it for the love. As an industry we feel we are no longer needed”.
The most impactful email I have received from a constituent came in late last night.
Sir John Hayes
Just before my hon. Friend comes to that impactful email, may I say that he makes a fundamentally important point about food security? Food security is vital to national economic resilience, as we have seen from the covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and so on. Food security means maximising the productivity of land, so does my hon. Friend agree that another threat that farmers and rural communities face is the invasion of large-scale solar developments and other industrialisation of the countryside, which is taking productive farmland out of the business of producing food and thereby guaranteeing food security?
Bradley Thomas
I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. As he rightly points out, we are at risk of large-scale industrial energy production installations becoming the new cash crop, displacing valuable agricultural land across our constituencies.
I want the House to be aware of a comment from a constituent who wrote to me last night:
“I have never written a personal email to an MP before but feel so strongly about the recent changes announced in the budget that I couldn’t let them go. Although on paper we might appear ‘rich’ the reality is we only make enough money each year to support…2 families and don’t have ‘millions’ in the bank. We pay our taxes like every other working person does. Every spare penny we get we invest in the farm to make it better for the next generation but after the budget announcements last week feel that that was a waste of time. I am beginning to think that the best option for my family would to be to sell up and move abroad to a country that appreciates its farmers and food.”
That is devastating, and I want the Government to reflect on those words very carefully.
I recall the Prime Minister’s words in his first speech in Downing Street, where he said that he wanted the Government to “tread more lightly” on our lives. Sadly, the Government are doing anything but; they are ruthlessly bearing down on every facet of British society in the most ideological fashion. I call on them to scrap the family farm tax and instead support British farmers. I also call on the Government to reverse the changes to tax on pick-up trucks, which are the workhorses of the countryside and of tradesmen and women across the country.
Although much of the debate has focused on farms, it is important to highlight that there is more to the rural economy than just our farmers. The countryside makes up more than 90% of the UK’s land. It is home to millions of people in our country and it contributes more than £270 billion per annum to our economy, from farming and horticulture to stewardship of the land and countryside sports. For our rural economy to thrive there needs to be sufficient infrastructure to attract people and businesses to those areas, including further investment in rural connectivity and mobile coverage.
Finally, our rural economy cannot exist if our rural areas are developed over. New housing developments cannot come at the expense of our green belt. Some 89% of land in my constituency is formally designated as green belt, but the target being imposed by the Government will directly result in thousands more homes being built on high-quality green-belt land in my constituency, which will undermine food security and our rural identity.
We must stand up for our rural communities and for farmers, and we must protect our countryside. I will always defend farms, the rural economy and our rural areas during my time in the House.
Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)
Some 81% of the land in the area that I represent is agricultural, meaning that North West Cambridgeshire, like much of the east of England, contributes a great deal to our country’s food security. As the Government have repeatedly and rightly said, food security is national security, and I am proud that my constituents play a huge role in that.
Farmers suffered under the last Government. Just before the general election, farmer confidence was at its lowest level since records began, but this Government are taking positive steps to reverse that trend. The farming budget for 2025-26 will be £2.4 billion, which is the biggest budget ever directed at sustainable food production, and will be vital for farmers across the country and in my constituency.
For those affected by flooding last year, I welcome the immediate £60 million made available from the farming recovery fund, which is a big increase compared with the figure under the last Government. I was also glad to hear the Secretary of State clarify earlier that the “vast majority” of farmers will not be affected by the change to agricultural property relief, and his assurances that the Government will protect family farms by preventing people coming from outside and buying farmland over the heads of local people to evade taxes.
One of the most pressing and significant issues that farmers have raised with me is the income of food producers. The dynamic between buyers and producers needs reform, with many producers reporting that they take under 1% of profit after retailers and intermediaries have taken their cut. With more than 95% of our food sold through just 10 retailers, many feel that some supermarkets are not giving them a fair deal. I strongly encourage the Government to look at that issue.
I also welcome the Secretary of State’s earlier comments about ensuring that trade deals do not undermine our farmers. For too long, we have allowed imports of food, both plant and animal products, that has been produced to lower standards than we expect of our farmers. That undermines them and tilts the playing field towards imported food because it prevents them competing on price. We must take action on that.
I now turn to rural crime. Many of our country’s rural towns have significant problems with crime, with a lower police presence following cuts under the last Conservative Government and an under-resourced justice system that has not been able to cope. My constituency has several rural towns and villages, including Ramsey, which has faced a string of robberies and knife-related incidents in recent years. Although the offenders in many of those incidents have been arrested and charged—I thank Cambridgeshire police for that—we must resource our police to restore their ability to work on prevention, not just to respond to crises.
The Government stood on a clear pledge to combat crime in our towns by bringing back neighbourhood and community policing with thousands of additional officers. Rural towns such as Ramsey must get their fair share of that, and I know that the Government are hearing that message.
Transport is also a significant issue, with limited public transport options in Ramsey and other towns. People living in rural areas often have fewer options for services, including education, employment and health services, and those who rely on public transport, which can be limited and inconvenient, are at a double disadvantage. Timetabling decisions based on commercial factors mean that children who live in rural areas in my constituency struggle to get to school, particularly in the village of Wittering.
Ben Obese-Jecty
Buses in Cambridgeshire are controlled by the combined authority and its Labour Mayor. Will the hon. Member, whose constituency neighbours mine, put pressure on Mayor Johnson to ensure that all our rural communities are included in the bus franchising and that we get the services that are desperately needed? As the hon. Member has pointed out, the Mayor is failing in that respect so far.
Sam Carling
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He claims that bus services are under the control of the combined authority, but the problem is that we do not have franchising yet. We are working on that and, in case any of my constituents are listening, the consultation is still open but will close on 20 November, so please fill it in—I just wanted to get that plug in.
In the lead-up to franchising, which will hopefully come through, the combined authority is already working to subsidise essential services and working with commercial companies to tackle the issues. I am confident in the work that we are doing. I am proud that the Government’s better buses Bill will deliver the opportunity for franchising to more local authorities. I urge the Government to keep making progress on making franchising easier, alongside their progress on nationalising our rail infrastructure, which we heard more about earlier.
Broadband connectivity must be another priority. Internet and mobile phone coverage has improved, but the service for people living in rural areas still has a long way to go. As of January, 47% of rural premises had access to gigabit-capable broadband, compared with 84% of premises in urban areas. That has serious implications for productivity, making it harder for people to work from home who would otherwise do so, for example. More widely, it has an impact on the ability to stay in contact with friends and loved ones who may be further afield.
I thank all hon. Members across the House for raising so many points today. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
I and residents and visitors alike love North Norfolk. However, we have to be honest about the challenges that rural areas like mine face, and about the changes and support that we need to tackle them.
Ten days ago, I had the pleasure of chairing a public meeting in the village of Hickling about the flooding issues facing the area. We brought together key stakeholders from no fewer than nine agencies to discuss with villages how we can prevent the cycle of flooding that has plagued the area for years on end. I was delighted to hear those agencies’ clear desire to work together in a more joined-up way, but they were all resolved on the need for longer-term planning. Giving budgets only one year at a time is not good enough for forward planning, let alone for investing in partnerships, strategies and skills.
The same goes for coastal erosion. We are part of the fastest-eroding coastline in north-west Europe. That erosion has a very real human impact: sadly, Bryony is soon to join the list of Happisburgh residents who have been forced to leave their forever home as the coastline erodes. She is passionate about making sure that more residents do not find themselves in the heartbreaking situation of losing the home they love to the North sea. Local campaign groups and councils are doing what they can to mitigate the effects, but they cannot keep to-ing and fro-ing between project funding. We need a joined-up strategy along the entire coastline to protect our beautiful environment, our heritage and our way of life, not just the highest possible number of chimney pots.
Buses in our villages and market towns are the only way many people can make it to work, education, medical appointments or shops and meet their friends and family. We need to radically rethink the delivery of public transport in rural areas like mine and create a network that really works for the communities it serves. I welcome the Government’s steps forward on bus franchising measures, but Norfolk needs greater powers to deliver change. I really hope that as the Government return to the drawing board—not their fault—on a devolution deal for our area, they will reflect on how giving greater powers to our community to design and deliver services could unlock Norfolk’s potential.
I must mention the deep concern across North Norfolk about the family farm tax included in the Budget. The Secretary of State made a good impression on farmers in Norfolk. “He gets it,” they said, and I think he does, so this must be really hard and uncomfortable for him and his team. Farmers have been the backbone of North Norfolk for generations—everybody knows a farming family or is in one—but they are really worried about their future. Others are worried about the impact on our area. I fear that the Government are just not in tune with what is happening to family farms in small areas like mine. They must tune into the realities. I am proud to speak up for farmers and farming today, and I will keep doing it at every opportunity. I love living in my rural area, and it is a pleasure to raise my children there, but we cannot accept half measures on the challenges we face. We need a better rural deal from Government, and dedicated, long-term strategies to protect our rural and coastal places.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
Given the time limit, I cannot deliver the magnum opus I wrote on the train on the way down here, but having been told in a call with Northumberland county council that one of the school catchment areas in my constituency is larger than the area surrounded by the M25, I think I can speak on rural affairs with authority.
It has been said to me in my constituency when I have been out and about that we pay more and get less in our communities. We go to smaller shops, so we have to buy things that are less efficiently priced; and our communities are used to being forgotten. They are used to being under-invested in, and to seeing their younger people leave due to the inability to find an appropriate job and home. One of the real tragedies of the last 14 years has been the Conservative party’s failure to appreciate that, and to invest in those communities. I gently invite Conservative Members to reflect on the reason why I stand here as the first ever Labour MP for Hexham, and why so many of my party colleagues represent rural constituencies. It is not just because it was a change election; it is because the Conservatives fell out of sync with what rural communities wanted and needed.
I am very proud to be out there working with and meeting local civic organisations, such as the Clean Tyne campaign led by Dr Stephen Westgarth, or Sustainable Haltwhistle. I have also sat at the kitchen table with my farmers to talk about the issues with the sustainable farming incentive, and payment schemes that do not really work for upland farmers. I invite the Secretary of State or the Minister responsible for farming to come and meet upland farmers in my constituency, who have really positive stories about the work they want to do, but who have been disadvantaged and had their hands tied by the legacy we have inherited.
I would like briefly to plug my Westminster Hall debate on school transport in Northumberland tomorrow. Although I will be speaking about school transport in that county, I would very much welcome participants from across the country, as I know that getting to school and accessing a great state education is fundamental for everyone.
Finally, I would like to touch on the health of the rivers. The north-east is one of the most iconic parts of the UK. We have Hadrian’s wall and some of the most stunning countryside in the UK, and we are a region defined by our rivers, including the Tyne, Tweed, Coquet, Wansbeck and Aln. One of the many reasons why I was sent to this place was the state of the River Tyne; it was seen by my community as an “open sewer”, to quote one person I spoke to on the doorstep, and there was an absolute lack of faith in the previous Government to get it cleaned up. The north-east would not be in the minds of so many people across the world if it was not for our rivers, and I absolutely welcome the steps this Government are already taking to clean them up. I know it will not be a quick process, but I look forward to working with them.
I want to touch on a few speeches by Opposition Members that were very constructive. They talked about rural-proofing policy, which is incredibly important. Rural policy should not just come up when the DEFRA team is sat on the Front Bench; it needs to be at the heart of every single thing this Government do to get our schools working, our economy moving, and our energy policy right.
Jayne Kirkham
In my constituency of Truro and Falmouth, housing is a major issue, as it is in many rural communities. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must take action on housing? We should, in particular, consider the impact of second homes in our rural communities.
Joe Morris
I absolutely agree. When I go to places like Bellingham, where I have a constituency surgery coming up soon, I am often told about the impact of second homes on the community. It contributes to a decline in a sense of place and in opportunities, and of course it crowds out younger people from getting on to the housing ladder. I agree that we urgently need to look at that, and I hope that the Government will consider it strongly.
Briefly, in the time I have left, I will celebrate the rural crime strategy. Members from all parts of the House have spoken about it a lot. During the election campaign, I spoke to a farmer who had someone try to nick her quad bike. She confronted him and had to wait 30 minutes for a police officer to arrive. She said that was a speedy response, and she was quite pleased with it. That just shows the level to which rural crime fighting sank under the previous Government.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
As a past president of the Young Farmers’ Clubs of Ulster and a former director of Rural Support, which is a mental health charity supporting farmers and farm families across Northern Ireland, I have worked on cases where farm families have been through foot and mouth, swine flu, avian influenza and TB. I have seen the impact. They have had to deal with complete herds being removed. However, I have never encountered so many farmers in Northern Ireland being as low as they are this minute, due to the farm family inheritance tax put on them by this Government in this place. They are so angry about what is happening.
The Secretary of State talked about not listening to the fury, or the alarming headlines, but a third of farms in Northern Ireland will be affected. Some 75% of our local dairy sector farms will be affected. Those on the Government Front Bench say, “No, they will not”, but that is the assessment of the Agriculture Minister in the devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland.
Robin Swann
It is also the assessment of the Ulster Farmers Union. I encourage the Government Front Benchers to engage with the devolved Administrations, because if our Agriculture Minister in Northern Ireland is causing alarm and raising headlines that are not accurate, it is up to this Government to correct that. That is the impact, and the feedback that I am receiving from farms, farm families and our Agriculture Minister in the devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland.
I spoke to a friend over the weekend who is a bit younger than me, with a young family. He is now concerned about shackling his family farm to his children. He has been progressive, and has taken up every financial opportunity to progress the family farm and make sure that it is fit for purpose. He now says that if he has to pay 10 years of inheritance tax, that is 10 years in which he will not be investing in his farm, and its productivity. The average income in Northern Ireland is £27,345, and these measures are making our family farms unsustainable.
I think the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake) mentioned devolved farming payments now becoming a Barnett consequential for Northern Ireland. I would love clarity from Treasury or DEFRA Ministers on who asked for that, because it was not Northern Ireland. It sounds as if it was not Wales, so why was that change made to how agricultural support goes to our devolved Administrations? On whose advice and guidance was that change made? What engagement did the Treasury or the Government have with the devolved institutions prior to making it? There are other issues on matters that are not devolved, but those were the two main ones I wanted to speak about.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Members will have observed that we have more Members standing than is possible to fit into the time we have. I propose an immediate three-minute time limit. Please be mindful that we may not get everybody in, even with that time limit.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
An excellent climate adaptation world café event was held in Rugby town hall on Saturday, organised by my colleague Councillor Alison Livesey, officers and others. It was attended by the public, community groups and indeed the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh). I am grateful to her for that. At the event, local councillors told me details of the unprecedented floods last winter in the villages of Wolston and Brandon, on the road near Bretford, and in surrounding areas. Significant damage was done to homes and property, and the Royal Oak pub in Brandon closed 11 times. I have met the owner, Khara Schrijvers, and seen the new flood barriers at the pub, which will hopefully ensure the dryness that pubs like in future. The people of these villages came together and showed the very best of community spirit and human nature as they helped one another. Earlier this year, the Wolston and Brandon flood action group was formed, partly in response to the lack of preparedness.
I know that this Government are doing much more than the previous Government; there is £2.4 billion extra over two years for flood defences and other innovations. When the heavens opened again this September, Ministers worked hard to co-ordinate and empower the various agencies, councils, emergency services and, ultimately, local communities. It is vital that the voices of local communities be heard. Parish councils are an important conduit for that. Listening locally is not only morally right, but the intelligent approach, because the intelligence garnered is more likely to be right and helpful in preventing future flooding. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister can reassure my constituents that the new Labour Government place flood resilience and climate adaptation and mitigation high up our list of priorities, and place rural villages and communities at the heart of all we do in this and other areas of policy.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Yesterday, I spoke to Ian, who has a beef enterprise and grows cider apples on his farm in Glastonbury. Now 74, he has worked his entire life to buy back his family’s 100-acre farm. He has finally done it, but the Government’s changes to the APR will soon tear it apart again, undoing his life’s work and leaving the farm unviable.
Sadly, Ian is not alone. During the debate, I read an email from a farmer in Charlton Musgrove who says that her family are shell-shocked by Labour’s attack on family farms. The farming sector has experienced one shock after the other in recent years, from Brexit to energy prices, the war in Ukraine, rising feed prices, the Conservatives’ terrible trade deals and mismanagement of the economy, and the botched transition from the basic payment scheme to the environmental land management schemes. Farming is in crisis, and here we are yet again with a misguided policy that hits the future sustainability of family-run farms.
We cannot allow this to continue as a sterile policy debate about optimal tax rates and allowances. This is about people’s lives, food security and the future of our countryside and the natural environment. It will not be wealthy landowners who suffer under the Government’s new family farm tax; it will be farming families barely able to make a living and, sadly, those who are left behind when a farmer dies unexpectedly, and who do not have access to clever accountants or special consultants. Not only will they have to deal with the emotional trauma of losing a parent or a partner; they may be at risk of losing the farm—their home.
The Government must abolish this family farm tax or, at the very least, raise the threshold to limit its impact on those who should not have to and cannot afford to bear the brunt. The Government must look closely at loopholes that allow wealthy landowners who are not farmers to use land as an inheritance tax loophole.
Agriculture is the most dangerous in industry in Britain. When we talk about farmers, many will assume that we are talking about males, but many women work in agriculture, and they are 10% more likely to suffer with depression and 15% more likely to suffer with anxiety. Women make up 55% of the farming workforce in England and Wales, so there is an urgent need for targeted interventions, particularly at key points in their lives, when they are most vulnerable to mental ill health, such as during extreme weather or disease outbreaks.
This family farm tax is another example of gender stereotypes and outdated assumptions about modern farming. Modern family farms are not always run by traditional families, so many will not be able to take advantage of the extra relief. The Government’s claim that 75% of farms will be unaffected relies on the assumption that every farmer is married and will benefit from twice the basic allowance.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Late in 1745, Dumfries was menaced by the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, who demanded cash and shoes as he retreated north. Today, Dumfries and Galloway is threatened by the great pretenders, the Cabinet, who also want cash. Apparently, they are sorted for shoes and Croydon wellies, though.
At the weekend, I attended the Dumfries and Galloway life awards, a tremendous celebration of the people of south-west Scotland. They are self-starters and hard workers, and just as well, for they face not only indifference from the Scottish Government but active harm from this Government. I spoke with one award winner, Kerr, whose expansion plans for his food business face a pause as he weighs the impact of increased employer national insurance contributions. I spoke with a farmer whose best hope of avoiding the Chancellor’s predatory death taxes is for his parents to live a further seven years—they are both aged over 80.
Rural Dumfries and Galloway does not want special treatment; it wants its fair share. It wants an acknowledgement that its way of life—with an emphasis on aspiration—is not wrong, though it does pose particular challenges. It wants an Agriculture Secretary who does not devolve and forget, but who sees some of Britain’s most productive grassland as a jewel in the crown and a vital part of UK food security. It wants a Government who appreciate that if someone in a town or city has £10 in their pocket, they will be able to do something with it, whereas in remote and rural Britain, that tenner probably will not get them to the farm road end.
Rural Britain is a greenhouse, bringing forth a rich harvest of food to our tables, but it could be more. It could be a powerhouse if the urban-obsessed party on the Government Benches stops treating it merely as a larder to be plundered. Bonnie Prince Charlie took those stolen shoes and trudged off to defeat. Perhaps Dumfries can seek reparations via the supine Foreign Secretary. Regardless, this Prime Minister and his Cabinet are limping towards their own electoral Culloden.
Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)
Agriculture and farming play a very important part in Welsh society, not just economically but culturally and socially. Farming families are custodians of the landscape and language in Wales, with a high proportion of them living and working in the Welsh-speaking heartlands. Agriculture is devolved, but trade deals are not, and neither are taxation and food security. Agriculture is integral to the Welsh economy, employing around 58,000 people. As the climate crisis leads to more food insecurity, supporting our farmers will be key to our future food security.
Despite the importance of farming and agriculture in Wales, this Labour Government have sought to undermine our farmers with the changes announced in the recent Budget. An effective 20% tax rate on assets over £1 million may seem reasonable on paper, but as we know, most farmers are asset rich and cash poor and would be unable to pay this tax. As I mentioned last week, the average wage for an upland farmer in Wales is £18,600.
About 30% of land in Wales is under some form of tenancy or let, with the majority being short term—of only a few years—under a farm business tenancy agreement. What is the Secretary of State doing to protect tenant farmers in Wales, who will be at the sharp end of this tax? The news regarding the changes in inheritance tax will be devastating to farmers, and the Government’s communication of it to the sector has been abysmal.
The election of Donald Trump in the USA has reopened speculation of a US-UK trade deal. The trade deal agreements we have had with Australia and New Zealand have undermined Welsh farmers with cheap imports, and we must not allow that to happen again. All Parliaments of the UK, including in Wales, should have a deciding say on any terms of a trade deal with America, particularly those that affect Welsh farmers. For example, the previous UK Government consulted to make the country of origin clearer on food labelling, so that customers could more easily buy British produce and support local farmers. Will the Secretary of State say what progress the new Government are making in that area, and will he consider going further by ensuring that “Welsh” and not just “British” labelling is included to help customers who wish to support Welsh farmers when they are shopping?
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
As an MP in a largely rural Cambridgeshire constituency, the potential impact of the changes to both agricultural and business property relief stand to have a devastating effect on the livelihoods of our family farms. I struggle to believe that newly minted rural Labour MPs, or indeed Cambridge’s own farming Minister, are experiencing full-throated support for this policy. We are yet to see Government Members take a stance against this policy on behalf of their constituents. They must be receiving the same angry and worried emails that we are, yet the few who actually come to the Chamber to speak in these debates genuflect before the Government’s anti-farming policy, while hundreds of others hide themselves away.
From my local perspective, I can only assume that farmers across the constituency boundary in Labour North West Cambridgeshire simply will not be impacted. Except they will be: there are 203 farm holdings, with a further 306 in Huntingdon and 688 across Huntingdonshire. Guy is an arable farmer in Warboys, right on the constituency boundary with North West Cambridgeshire. His is a 600-acre arable farm producing wheat, barley, beans and sugar beet. Under the Government’s changes to APR and BPR, if Guy were to pass away before passing the farm to his children, the whole business would face a 20% tax bill, equal to £1.2 million, or £120,000 a year over 10 years. That is the entire surplus generated by the farm before any wages are drawn. The only way to fund such a bill would be to sell the land—over 20% of the farm. Once that land is gone, it is gone.
As the Prime Minister himself stated at the 2023 NFU conference:
“losing a farm is not like losing any other business—it can’t come back”.
That land will end up being sold through necessity to developers for houses or for solar farms, both of which, conveniently, are political priorities for this Government. Farming clearly is not.
Next week, thousands of farmers will be here in Westminster lobbying us, their representatives in this House, to tell us of the impact this policy will have on their livelihoods. The fact that the NFU has been forced into taking these steps—after unproductive discussions with the Secretary of State, whom many will feel they can no longer trust after his pledge that the Government had no plans to make changes to APR turned out to be a falsehood—is a damning indictment of Labour’s commitment to farmers. The Prime Minister claimed that this Labour Government:
“seeks a new relationship with the countryside and farming communities…A relationship based on respect and on genuine partnership.”
Whether it be in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire or any of our rural heartlands, the Prime Minister is not delivering on that promise. The Prime Minister’s “new relationship” has quickly soured into a toxic one.
I hope that Labour MPs will be brave enough not only to face their constituents when they come to Westminster next week, but to lobby the Chancellor and the Secretary of State to ensure that our family farms are not taxed out of existence.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
I am proud to represent the Bridgwater constituency, which has both urban and rural communities. It is plain to see that those living in the countryside do not enjoy the same quality of service as those living in town.
One of the greatest differences is in broadband and mobile signals. In today’s economy, access to fast, reliable internet is essential for any business, whether to receive orders or to complete VAT returns. When I questioned the Minister last month about funding for the shared rural network, he confirmed that the new Government will continue the plans of the Conservative Administration to extend access to rural communities. Since then, we have had disappointing news. Connecting Devon and Somerset, along with its partner Airband, is scaling back plans to provide fibre optic broadband to rural areas in my constituency and in others in Somerset. I have requested a meeting with the Minister on this matter, as it is of critical importance. If we are to ensure the prosperity of rural areas, investment in rural broadband and 5G must be a national priority.
Another issue that disproportionately affects our rural communities is flooding, which particularly affects our farmers. When farms flood, as they often do in Somerset, the damage to crops, infrastructure and livestock can be devastating. The Government need to improve how statutory bodies work together. Joining up their efforts would help us to predict floods better and prevent agencies from being overwhelmed when multiple flooding events occur. The Government should take a more proactive role in supporting farmers with better flood prevention measures, and ensure that compensation, when provided, is fair, accessible and timely.
The challenges of food security require us to invest in local agriculture and ensure that our farmers are thriving in an environment that values sustainable, reliable food production. The Government’s increase in inheritance tax for farmers will harm food production in our country. It is a poorly conceived attack on family farms, many of which are high in value—land, buildings and machinery—but produce a low return. Families who work hard to feed the nation should not be taxed out of existence by the Chancellor, but Labour’s family farm tax will make it impossible for many farmers to pass on their land to their children.
If I had had enough time, I would have addressed rural bus services—or the lack thereof—rural housing, especially for young families, and the provision of small rural schools. However, I will end by saying that with better policies for food security and farming, Britain can have a strong and vibrant countryside.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
In my constituency and across the country, family farmers are the custodians of our countryside. For generations, they have contributed to our nation’s food security and land stewardship, provided employment, supported local supply chains, and brought rural communities together. The changes to agricultural property relief—this family farm tax—is the wrong tax aimed at the wrong targets. As we have heard many times, farms, while asset rich, are cash poor. Most farmers do not have hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash available to pay an inheritance tax bill, so they will have to sell the very assets that they use to farm to raise capital.
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
indicated dissent.
Harriet Cross
The Minister shakes his head, and he has been shaking his head throughout the debate. The issue is this: the Government are not listening to farmers the length and breadth of the country. They are not listening to the National Farmers Union, and they are not listening to the CLA. People who speak for the farming community, people who represent the farming community, are not being listened to, and that is why they are in this position. It does not matter, it seems, how much we say to the Minister, or how much we say what our constituents are saying. The Government are not listening, and they are not willing to listen.
Last Friday, I met members of NFU Scotland’s north-east region. Perhaps the Minister will not listen to this either, but they told me about some matters that they had been concerned about. One was a farmer whose father, aged 90, still owns the land and still farms it. He said to me, “I will have to sell. I thought I had a lifetime of farming ahead of me, but now it turns out that I only have what is left of my father's lifetime.” He did not sound angry; he just sounded broken. Another put it like this: “It is just a waste. Do they”—the Government—“not understand the resource that we have invested into family farms for generations—the skills, health and safety, teaching about husbandry and agronomy? We invest so much more than just money into farms, and this will all be lost. It is just such a waste.”
In their manifesto the Government said that
“food security is national security.”
They reiterated that last week, adding:
“The Government’s commitment to supporting farmers and rural communities is unwavering.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2024; Vol. 756, c. 23.]
However, in the few months since the election, the Government have done nothing to justify those claims. Granting solar farms on prime land, taxing fertiliser, removing the ringfence from the agricultural budgets for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and making changes to inheritance tax will impact family farms for generations. The Government have missed a key point: it is not words that impress or satisfy our farming communities; it is action, and so far this Government’s actions have let our farmers down.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
On Armistice Day, I want to mention the vital role that our farmers played during the world wars to keep food on the table, as they continue to do. If I had more time, I would spend it championing the farmers in my own constituency, not least because it is the home of Berkswell cheese. I would welcome any Member who would like to try it, and they might also like to try some of the turkeys from Rod Adlington’s farm. However, I will focus on APR and BPR. I thought that the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), the shadow Secretary of State, did a wonderful job of deconstructing the Government’s arguments in that regard, despite Ministers’ desire to hide their heads in the sand.
We are seeing a travesty unfold in front of us. We are seeing the travesty of the Secretary of State saying that farmers need to do more with less, and the Government’s sheer brass neck in not listening, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross). Our farmers are working people. They put food on our table and are responsible for our food security, but the Budget puts our family farms on notice. In my constituency and those across the country, family farms ensure that we have food on our tables. They do not do so at a profit, even if they have assets that they will now be taxed on.
I spent some time wondering why the policy was introduced, and it is clear that it is a cynical ploy to free up land so that the Deputy Prime Minister can concrete over our green belt and the Energy Secretary—[Interruption.] Labour Members can shout me down if they want—that is fine—but farmers are listening and can see the arrogance of those on the Government Benches. The Energy Secretary’s desire is to have pylons and solar panels peppered across our green belt. The Government broke their promises on NI, they broke their promises to pensioners, and now they are breaking their promises to our farmers.
Some clarity is needed, because the Chancellor has repeatedly said that the thresholds will be shared between spouses. That was contradicted by the Treasury, and the Secretary of State said something else at the Dispatch Box. Farmers need clarity, because how can they possibly plan if the Chancellor and the Secretary of State do not know their own policies and are contradicting each other?
The Government continue to say that the policy will not affect that many farmers, but DEFRA’s own analysis shows that it will affect 66% of them. The Secretary of State said he was using the Treasury’s figures. Why do two Departments’ figures contradict each other? We need clarity on that, because it is important. [Interruption.] Labour Members can shout me down, but it is really important for the livelihoods of so many people.
When it comes to undermining our food security and national security, the only winners are autocrats around the world who would like to see us weakened—autocrats like Vladimir Putin. That is exactly what the policy will lead to.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
We all want growth, but growth requires investment. Investment requires confidence, but confidence among rural communities is collapsing, including in Boston and Skegness. Since the Budget, one farmer has cancelled a £1 million expansion plan for his strawberry-growing business. I know another farmer who has cancelled a £300,000 investment in equipment. Just yesterday, I heard from a hospitality entrepreneur in my constituency who has cancelled another investment in a new pub. It means less growth, fewer jobs and less incentive for young people to stay in our rural communities. That is the reality.
Confidence in the Environment Agency is also collapsing. Just yesterday afternoon, I was on the riverbank at Wainfleet and saw the consequences of failed management, the failure to dredge our rivers and the failure to protect our riverbanks. Again, it means that local farmers and entrepreneurs will not have the confidence to invest. Confidence is such a critical word, but confidence in this Government is collapsing in rural communities. It seems the Government want to blight our countryside, including in my constituency, with thousands of ugly pylons and thousands of acres of solar farms. That will not provide food security.
The Government are determined to set course on this ridiculous farm tax, but I urge them to have the humility to listen and to look at the results. If investment is down, jobs are down and family farms are down in one or two years’ time, they should accept that they were wrong and reverse it.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Over 52,000 hectares of the land in South Northamptonshire is agricultural—equivalent to more than 35,000 football pitches—so rural issues are at the heart of my constituency. I will focus on three matters: the death of the family farm, flooding and solar farms.
The Chancellor’s agricultural property relief reforms have caused huge distress among the farming community in South Northamptonshire. Last week, I joined fellow Opposition MPs to deliver a letter to Downing Street urging her to rethink this disastrous policy. However, we must not forget the other pernicious elements of the Budget. Increasing tax on fertilisers—the carbon tax—to meet net zero targets will force farmers to produce less food. We will therefore have to import it from a country that does not have such a tax, with all the resulting carbon impact. It is unbelievably counterintuitive. The Government will also now class double-cab pick-ups—the workhorse vehicle of the countryside—as company cars for tax purposes. This change could increase the tax burden on the working people of the countryside by 211%. I am staggered that Labour can say that food security is national security while introducing a smorgasbord of attacks on farmers.
Members may also be aware that in September parts of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire suffered catastrophic flooding. The village of Grendon in my constituency was flooded in a matter of minutes at 9 o’clock on a Sunday evening, resulting in the entire downstairs floors of some properties being ruined, cars being destroyed and priceless memories being lost. Residents believe this may have occurred due to insufficient dredging of a nearby brook, such that when the heavy rainfall occurred upstream, the water built up like a dam that burst and wreaked havoc. Will the Secretary of State and the Minister commit to exploring how extensively the Environment Agency dredges small brooks, to prevent such catastrophes from recurring?
On solar farms, Easton Maudit in my constituency would be enveloped on three sides by the proposed 2,000-acre Green Hill solar farm, with once-beautiful English countryside reduced to grey sheets of plastic and glass. I am not against more renewable energy, but to have a solar farm on such a scale totally enveloping an idyllic rural village, while warehouses on the M1 sit without solar panels on their roofs, seems totally illogical to me and my constituents. Our rural towns and villages may be smaller in size and less visible than our urban cities, but their residents are just as important and we must protect them.
Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
The gravity of this situation was brought home to me by a letter that I received recently from a South Cotswolds constituent, a farmer near Sherston whose experience vividly illustrates the challenge our agricultural sector faces. He manages a 200-acre farm, a combination of owned and rented primarily arable land, with a small field of Brussels sprouts, where I spent a day helping with the harvest last Christmas. I am no farmer, but that day spent in the mud and drizzle gave me some inkling of just how hard our farmers work and how dedicated they are. Despite their best efforts, their financial reality is stark. Last year, with an above-average harvest and a favourable crop price, they made just £34,000 before even paying themselves anything. This year, with falling crop prices, they anticipate a loss.
The recent Budget proposals have cast a long shadow over our farming communities, adding to an already vulnerable situation. The changes to agricultural property relief threaten to force the sale of farms that have been in the same family for generations. That Brussels sprouts farmer faces a potential inheritance tax bill of nearly £239,000, a sum that could be paid only by selling off part of the farm that has been in his family for three generations.
The Liberal Democrats have long recognised that food security is national security. We understand that environmental stewardship and food production are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing goals. It is in line with this that I have introduced my private Member’s Bill, the Climate and Nature Bill, which would help to support farmers, to support nature and to support us. Our farmers are not just food producers: they are the guardians of our land, regenerating soil, restoring wildlife and enhancing biodiversity.
Many people think that the climate crisis is the cause of the nature crisis, but many believe—rightly, I think—that it is the loss of nature that is contributing to the climate crisis. The Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, in the South Cotswolds, is now starting to pioneer the idea of zero dig, knowing that when we regenerate soil it sinks more carbon, mitigating climate change; it holds more water, mitigating flooding; and it yields more nutritious food, improving human health.
I call on the Secretary of State to heed the voices of our farmers. We need to work together to create a future in which British agriculture is strong, resilient and sustainable—a future where our farmers can produce the food we need while nurturing the land we love.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
Rural communities are proud communities, and our farmers work tirelessly around the clock not only to put high-quality food on our plates but, through their businesses, to help to keep our rural economy going—as, indeed, do many other rural businesses, as Members on both sides of the House have recognised.
I congratulate the hon. Members for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) and for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) on delivering their maiden speeches. I know Stirling and Strathallan very well, having been born in Stirling—I am a proper Unionist—which gave me my red hair. Each spoke proudly on behalf of their constituents, and I welcome them to this place.
We are just a few months into this Labour Government and, following a string of broken promises and damaging cuts, trust among our farming community is now at an all-time low. Why are this new Government, across every single Department, deciding to sideline the voice of our rural communities?
We have heard that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is ploughing ahead with his plans to replace productive agricultural land with solar panels, and to replace protected moorlands with wind turbines—all against the consent of local people. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is taking away from local people the power to decide how they would like to see their rural communities expand, while providing no commitment whatsoever to improve services and infrastructure alongside any increased demand. The Secretary of State for Transport is scrapping the £2 bus cap, which the previous Government introduced as a vital part of the rural transport plan. Labour’s change leaves many people in remote rural communities paying even more to get to work or to visit friends and loved ones.
The Chancellor is stifling rural growth by hiking national insurance for small business owners, who are the backbone of our rural community, alongside her disastrous changes to inheritance tax relief through the ill-thought-through cap on agricultural property relief and business property relief, which will affect not only multigenerational family farms but trading businesses with assets valued well over the Government’s ridiculous £1 million cap. The Chancellor is also taxing double-cab pick-up trucks, as well as increasing the fertiliser tax, which is expected to increase costs by up to £50 a tonne.
Then, of course, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has willingly sold off his own budget to the Chancellor and broken every pre-election promise that he and his Government made to farmers, and then had the cheek to tell them to do more with less. That is all while he is dramatically reducing the delinked payment rates, which take effect next year, despite many farming businesses already having factored the income into their cash-flow forecasts. It is quite simple: this Labour Government do not understand rural communities and, what is worse, do not even appear to want to listen to them.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me and David Walston from Thriplow in South Cambridgeshire that the impact of house prices and infrastructure means there is a complete disconnect between land value and income, which is affecting—
Robbie Moore
I know David well, as a fellow Nuffield farming scholar, and I agree with him on this Budget’s catastrophic consequences.
I am not sure how many farmers the Secretary of State spoke to in Croydon over the weekend, but I can tell him that the many farmers I spoke to are up in arms. Just last week I was at the northern farming conference in Hexham where, perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge number of complaints were raised by the farmers in attendance, with some even protesting at the gates. Ian Brown, a constituent of the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), said that this Budget will have catastrophic consequences for the farming community, yet all we heard from the Minister during that conference was a defence of the new Government, and not a single word about how they may have got it wrong. I understand that when he addressed the egg and poultry conference this morning, the Secretary of State concluded that farmers are exaggerating the consequences of the Budget. It is just staggering.
I am sure that many of the new Labour MPs, representing some of our fantastic rural constituencies, have received huge amounts of correspondence from farmers outlining their disgust at Labour’s Budget, but we heard very little from them in voicing their concerns. I am not sure whether the Whips are silencing them from raising their concerns, or whether they are completely tone deaf to the Budget’s direct impact on many of their constituents. If they would like some help, maybe I could outline some of the things they should be raising in this debate, such as increases in taxes on machinery, fertiliser, building materials, farm diversification and employees, and, worst of all, the crippling family farm tax, which risks forcing thousands of hard-working farmers to surrender their life’s work to the Chancellor.
Labour Members do not understand that the vast majority of family farmers are not multimillionaires; most are cash poor and operate under tiny margins, with many struggling to break even. To sustain their businesses, they generally operate from an asset base that has a high value. That is why the APR and BPR caps that have been imposed are so out of touch with the reality on the ground, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) rightly outlined. When the value of the farmland, the farmhouse and perhaps a cottage or two is taken into account, and then the value of any livestock, growing crops, machinery, stocks or crops in store is added, along with the value of any farm diversification project that may have taken place, the value of any asset is likely to be well in excess of the £1 million cap, so the tax will impact the vast majority of farming businesses.
The Minister will say, “Look at the detail”, but I assure him we have looked at the detail, as have the NFU, the CLA, the Tenant Farmers Association, the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, and many professionals, be they accountants, solicitors or land agents working in the sector, as well as many of the constituents of right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches. We have all come to the same conclusion: Labour’s positioning is wrong, will have catastrophic consequences and must change. I again ask the Minister to provide clarity on the information he is relying on to make these decisions.
The smokescreen of a £3 million cap is incompatible with many farming businesses. It will not provide many farming businesses or family farming set-ups with the reassurance the Chancellor claims to be giving them. The same can be said about the justification of the 10-year payment for any IHT debt. That debt would result in assets having to be disposed of, because businesses will simply not have the funds to pay, nor will the banks be willing to lend against any IHT tax, should it be imposed, because many farmers will not be able to service such a loan. Will the Government publish a full impact assessment of the consequences their Budget will have on many farming businesses, food security and the larger rural sector?
We should never forget that this debate is about people. Hard-working farmers are at the heart of the debate. Some of their lives will be changed for ever. Farming can be a very lonely business, with long hours and the constant stress of battling against the odds. Our farmers are under extreme pressure, but unfortunately this Budget has done nothing to provide them with any reassurance, support or certainty that the Government are on their side. It is no surprise that charities are raising concerns about the shocking rise in mental health issues among our farming communities following the announcements in the Government’s Budget. I pay tribute to those farming charities and organisation that help to provide much-needed support, not only to our farmers but to all those involved in our remote rural communities.
To sum up, sometimes in politics it is hard to admit to being wrong, but after speaking to farmers, agricultural businesses and farming organisations up and down the UK, it is clear that the Government have got this wrong and are completely off the mark. I suspect even the Ministers on the Treasury Bench know that they have got this wrong, but they have chosen to double down. For the sake of our farmers and our rural communities—in fact, everyone who has been impacted by the Budget—I say to the Government that change was one of Labour’s key promises in the election and, right now, nothing would be more welcome.
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to wind up this debate and to add my gratitude to, and support for, farmers working hard up and down the country to feed the nation and protect our environment.
I welcome the shadow Ministers to their places on the Opposition Front Bench. I spent nearly five years sitting there, and I have to say it is better on this side. During that time, how rarely we ever got to discuss rural policy in the Chamber. It is interesting that it has taken a Labour Government to give Government time to allow Members to speak up for rural areas. What brilliant contributions we have had from Labour Members about the things that matter to rural areas. I shall mention some of the excellent speeches.
I was thrilled to hear the three maiden speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) spoke about a range of issues—[Interruption.] Of course farming is important, but Conservatives should remember that many other things are going on in rural areas. We heard about those from my hon. Friend, but we also heard about ghastly homophobic bullying, and I pay tribute to him for his brave comments. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) about the extraordinary pedigree in his constituency, as well the wide range of issues, including film and television production, that help to create rural prosperity.
Closer to my part of the world, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) described the beautiful countryside, but also talked of the challenges in housing and the food banks that scar our country. How much we should all work to ensure that food poverty is not faced in the future.
I cannot talk about all the speeches today, but I was pleased to hear the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) raising some other issues beyond the one that I will come to in a moment. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) about flooding—a feature of many speeches. We heard a powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) about the positive things that the Labour Government are doing to address the real issues that we face.
We also heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, who is not in his place—[Interruption.] I am sorry—I missed him. I think he has moved. I always listen closely to his speeches and he made an important point when he said it is not about the figures. That is true, because the figures have been misrepresented, but he was right to say that there is a real fear out there—precisely because of the misrepresentations, not because of the figures.
We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough), who showed the difference between this side of the House and the other side. The future will be different for rural areas, food production and farming—[Interruption.] In a good way, because we are the future, they are the past. Then we went to my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), and we heard about how important it is to work collaboratively with people. We also heard about the important transition from the basic payments system towards the new way of working with and rewarding farmers effectively.
From my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) we heard about crime. It was interesting that it took a Labour Member, so deep into the debate, to talk about an issue that anyone who had actually been out on farms would have heard about—the constant thefts of GPS units. I sometimes wonder what world Conservative Members are living in—do they just read The Daily Telegraph all the time? Is that where they get their information?
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) spoke about wonderful national parks and better access to the countryside, which is important for so many people; the Government will deliver on that. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) spoke about how prosperity comes to rural areas. Sometimes it comes from filming and TV. There are many ways in which prosperity is earned in the countryside; this is the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) spoke about rural crime and PC Susan Holliday; I very much commend her for her work. My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) spoke about not just flooding but biosecurity, which is so important, and mental health, which we will come to in the Adjournment debate. I associate myself with the comments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), about the important work that so many charities are doing.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) spoke about rural homelessness, which is an important topic. I was struck by how negative Opposition Members are about the prospect of building more homes. That is what matters to all our constituents. They need somewhere to live, not just somewhere to rent out to people at extortionate rates. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) reminded the House about the extraordinary low levels of farmer confidence when the last Government were in power. The Conservatives bear some responsibility for that lack of confidence.
I was delighted to visit Hexham last week for the excellent conference. I say to the shadow Minister, it is striking how many people come up to me after each of these events and say, “You’re right. You’re right. You’re right.” Of course, against the huge peer pressure they are reluctant to say it, but they know that we are right. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) is the first Labour MP for that area. The Conservatives might want to think about why that is. I think it is because they are looking to the past, not the future. We finished by hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (John Slinger). How long it took in the debate to get to parish councils—the people closest to the ground.
Let me turn to the issue that the Opposition are consistently raising. I hear and understand what people are saying, but I waited in vain through the entire debate for an Opposition Member to address the real figures—the actual claims that have been made under APR. They are not a projection or a guess, but the figures published by the people in the Treasury who actually collect the tax. Those figures are of course the figures that we have been quoting: between 400 and 500 claims per year. With the changes in behaviour that are likely as a consequence of the policy—possibly, and quite likely, very good consequences—the numbers will be very small. That is not just what we have said; Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said it.
Daniel Zeichner
I will not, because I am afraid we are very close to the end. Opposition Members had four hours to get to the figures, but of course they would not want to engage with them because they tell a different story. We are confident that the policy can be made to work, but I am in discussion with the NFU and others on the figures so that they can understand how we arrived at the policy. We will continue to ensure that we engage properly with everybody. My hon. Friends have discovered that when they go and talk to people and explain it clearly, people are reassured. People should be reassuring rather than frightening.
Members raised issues around the devolved budgets. This year’s settlement has been carried forward in the same way as before, but what has changed is that it is no longer ringfenced for the devolved Administrations, so they can make the decisions. I would hope that the devolved Administrations would welcome that.
Let me finish on the positive news about the future that we are setting out for our food production system. I give credit to the previous Government for the agricultural transition that they began. The difference now is that we will turbocharge it and ensure that we transition in such a way that in the future we not only have strong food production in this country, but protect the environment and nature, with the stability of the biggest budget ever—over half a billion pounds for SFI this year. That would not have happened under the previous Government. I am confident that we will have a strong future for British farming in this country, provided that people do not spend the whole time talking it down.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered rural affairs.