Westminster Hall

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 28 January 2025

[Sir Desmond Swayne in the Chair]

Road Safety: Young Drivers

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Before I call Julia Buckley, I wish to make a short statement. I have been advised that she wishes to raise relevant cases that are not currently sub judice but have been subject to a completed police investigation and a coroner inquest. Caution must be exercised by any Member wishing to raise the specifics of relevant cases.

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered road safety for young drivers.

Thank you for chairing this Westminster Hall debate on road safety for young drivers, Sir Desmond, and for allowing me to present the opening statement to our Minister for the Future of Roads, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). I thank her for giving up her time today to engage in this discussion.

Road traffic collisions are the biggest killer of young people aged 15 to 29 worldwide. In 2023, 290 young people were killed in the UK as a result of a road collision, and nearly one quarter of all road collisions involved young people. Although drivers under 24 make up only 6% of total licence holders, they represent 18% of all car drivers killed and seriously injured. That is because one in five newly qualified drivers will have an accident in their first year. For any other leading cause of death of our young people, we would declare a public health emergency and prioritise resources to tackle the crisis.

Unfortunately, young people are also more likely to be involved in crashes causing multiple injuries and those that involve a greater number of people. There is much evidence to suggest that younger and less experienced drivers carry a heavier risk. The road safety campaign Brake points to some development-related risks, including the level of brain development, overconfidence and poor assessment of hazards, that make young drivers more prone to serious accidents.

[Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for the way she is laying out her case. Does she agree that preventing young people from speeding is one way to prevent accidents? Like me, she knows that it is very difficult to get fixed speed cameras in place. The current Government guidance says that three serious accidents or deaths must occur before a fixed speed camera can be installed. Does she agree that a preventive approach would be much more successful than a punitive approach?

[Julia Buckley]

I agree that all measures that can prevent collisions, injuries and deaths should be explored. Prevention is often not only better but cheaper than dealing with the consequences of doing nothing.

Research from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has shown that young drivers have poorer visual awareness. They display a smaller range of horizontal scanning of the road, they check their mirrors less, and they focus more on stationary objects than moving objects.

In rural areas such as my constituency of Shrewsbury, the statistics are compounded by the disproportionate danger on countryside roads. According to National Farmers Union Mutual’s 2024 “Rural Road Safety” report, there were nearly 1,000 deaths on rural roads that year. Tragically, collisions on rural roads are four times more likely to end in a fatality. That report showed that rural hazards are often entirely different from those on urban roads, and require a specific set of skills and awareness—including the need to look out for livestock or agricultural vehicles, the lack of lighting or road markings, narrow passing points, the lack of visibility, blind corners and poor road quality. It highlighted the need for improved road maintenance and infrastructure.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Will she join me in congratulating charity groups such as Life After, in my area, which deals with people who have suffered trauma and the loss of partners or close relatives in road traffic accidents? It does so much to help people after the traffic accidents that she is so eloquently talking about. That type of education would help young people.

[Julia Buckley]

I agree, and it is absolutely excellent to hear of any support for families who have been bereaved as a result of a collision. That can be used to educate others, so that we can try to prevent accidents in the future. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

However, a majority of drivers wrongly assume that urban roads are more dangerous. That leads to an underestimation of the risks involved in driving on rural roads. NFU Mutual produced a code for countryside roads to support education and awareness-raising of the specific driving skills that would help. That could be incorporated into the driving test or a follow-up course of additional learning as part of the driver’s probationary period.

Many young people who live in rural areas feel isolated and, as a consequence, feel compelled to start driving as early as possible because of the lack of public transport, which leaves them unable to access college work, social or sporting activities. In Shropshire, we have lost more than 5,000 bus routes since 2010 and 17-year-olds are increasingly driving their first car out of necessity—something that would be anathema to a teenager growing up in London or Manchester, where public transport is so easy and cheap to use.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I congratulate my constituency neighbour on securing this critical debate. She is making an excellent case for improving road safety for young people. Does she agree that putting public transport infrastructure in place is critical to giving people options, and to enabling them to have a social life and feel less isolated in rural areas without having to get in the car at a very young and very risky age?

[Julia Buckley]

I could not agree more, and I think that particularly affects young people living in rural areas. It is not surprising that between 2019 and 2023, nearly half of casualties in young car driver collisions occurred on rural roads. Each of those numbers is a person—a young person with their whole life ahead of them, a son or daughter whose family love and cherish them.

[Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)]

My constituent, Sharron Huddleston, has been campaigning after tragically losing her daughter Caitlin in 2017. She was one of those children on rural roads who tragically lost her life as a passenger in a young novice’s car. Sharon founded the Forget-me-not Families Uniting group. They campaign for restrictions on the number of passengers that young drivers can carry in the car, and on night-time driving. What haunts me is the fact that had we listened to people campaigning on this issue more than 40 years ago, Caitlin would still be here today. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time we looked at this issue seriously and put in place restrictions to protect young drivers and other people on the road?

[Julia Buckley]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I think we are going to be hearing lots of suggestions today about all the measures that could help prevent such tragedies, because each death is an avoidable tragedy that freezes these young people in time, forever prevented from growing up to fulfil their full potential.

Harvey Owen, the son of my constituent, was killed in a fatal car crash while travelling from Shrewsbury with three other young men, all of whom were killed in the accident. Four young lives were taken too soon, leaving their families behind with an unbearable void where their child should be.

Crystal Owen, Harvey’s mother, has taken that raw pain and channelled her energy into a focused campaign. She is dedicated and selfless in her advocacy of young drivers and their families. It is on behalf of Crystal Owen that I requested today’s debate. She is sitting with us here today, surrounded by other families of young people killed in serious car crashes. I thank them all for coming today for what cannot be an easy day. We really appreciate their presence. They have formed the Forget-me-not group to campaign together so that nobody else has to suffer as they have. With Crystal’s permission, I will read out the story of Harvey Owen written in her words, because nothing I could say could do justice to her personal tragedy. This is Crystal’s story:

“My kind-hearted son Harvey had just turned 17 in November 2023. A couple of weeks later, he asked me if he could go to Wales with two friends he had known since school. It was to be his first weekend away with friends, and as a parent, I felt it was time to give him a little freedom. He and his friends planned to stay at one of their granddads’ houses, and when I heard this, I thought, ‘What harm can come to him?’ It was a trusted friend’s family, in a safe place. It felt like the right thing to do, to let him experience a bit more independence. At this age, you need to give them a little freedom, right? So, I agreed.

After seeing a video of one of the parents confirming where they were staying, I had no reason to doubt Harvey’s story about who was driving. We had always known Harvey’s friends. Our home was often where the boys would gather to play music for many years. As far as we knew he had no friends who had even passed their driving tests, so we felt comfortable with the situation. Harvey seemed so grown-up now...mature and responsible.

I thought to myself, he was ready for this.

Before he left, Harvey sat in his bedroom playing ‘Ring of Fire’ on his guitar, knowing I loved this song. I told him how proud I was of him, how talented he was, and I gave him a hug, telling him I loved him. He jokingly told me to stop being weird, but he said he loved me too, and not long after, he left. It was the last time I would ever see my beautiful son.

The following morning, Harvey sent me a picture message of the view from the cottage, and everything seemed fine. However, what I didn’t know at the time was that the boys had decided to go on a camping trip. It later transpired that another 18-year-old boy Harvey had recently met at college, a newly qualified driver, had also gone and was actually the one driving. Just over an hour later, after sending me the text, my son and his three friends were dead.

After some of my texts didn’t go through, I started to get concerned. The next thing I knew, we were frantically driving around Snowdonia, having discovered they were missing. Our worry soon turned to panic, and we made our way to Bangor police station. The feeling of being told they had found four bodies, and one they believed to be my son, is indescribable. The pain of that moment felt as much physical as it did mental. It was as if my world had stopped right there in that instant.

A suffocating numbness washed over me, and I felt I was being ripped apart from the inside. Time felt like it froze, like everything around me became a blur. It was as though the world was no longer a place I wanted to be. The life I had known, filled with my son’s laughter, his music, his dreams, was ripped away in an instant. It is an unbearable shock and pain. I wanted to die myself, just to escape the nightmare I was now living. The thought of facing a world without my son, without his presence, was too much to bear. I don’t remember much after that moment; my partner said I was howling, saying on repeat that it couldn’t be Harvey. I knew in that instant I would only ‘exist’ for the rest of my days.

It later emerged that the young driver had lost control of the car on the bend of a rural road. The vehicle ended up in a water-filled ditch, and despite their attempts to escape, all four boys tragically drowned. The news of their deaths was overwhelming. To know that Harvey and his friends had suffered such a tragic end, unable to survive and escape the car, is a pain I cannot put into words. The grief I feel in the wake of this loss is all-consuming, and the loss of my son has left a permanent aching void in my life. It is something that, unless you are unfortunate enough to ever experience yourself, you will never even come close to understanding the pain.

In the months following Harvey’s passing, I could barely function, only leaving my bed to attend the funeral. The circumstances surrounding his trip have weighed heavily on me. I would never have allowed him to go if I had known the full details. A friend informed me that in some countries newly qualified drivers are not allowed to take peer-age passengers for a set period, and are required to gain experience on rural roads first. It seemed like common sense to me, and I thought it was a no-brainer.

After weeks of research, I began my campaign to make driving safer for young drivers, advocating for change in the light of the shocking statistic that 76% of fatalities in crashes involving young drivers are not the driver themselves. Anyone could be affected. I’ve had to publicly share my grief, putting it on display for the media, in order to leverage their coverage and raise awareness about the horrifying statistics around young driver crashes. All of this, while I still haven’t had the time or space to process my own pain.

In October 2024 at the inquest, we learned that the boys had all been practically unharmed by the crash. They were conscious and tried to escape the car. Thanks to the manual back windows, Harvey was able to wind his window down. However, due to the lack of a simple safety hammer, something that could have shattered the glass in seconds and cut through seat belts, precious time was lost. The thought of Harvey’s and the boys’ final moments will haunt me for the rest of my life. I strongly believe that such a safety tool should be made mandatory in all cars. While it is difficult to determine how many lives such devices could save in the long run, in cases like Harvey’s it would have made the difference between life and death.

Although ultimately I feel it is a reactive solution to a more deep-rooted problem. If my son wasn’t able to get in the car, due to safety measures in place to protect newly qualified drivers and their passengers, then he would not have needed the hammer, as the crash would not have taken place. My campaign is not about punishing young people but about protecting them. Implementing these safety measures would help safeguard their lives by addressing the risks associated with inexperience and impulsivity, allowing them to enjoy their freedom without facing unnecessary danger.

During the course of the inquest, the evidence revealed matters giving rise to concern, which the coroner published, stating that he felt there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken where younger people are carried in motor vehicles driven by newly qualified and/or young drivers, and that preventative action should be taken.

After nearly a year of campaigning, I should have felt relief when the coroner issued this ‘Preventing Future Deaths’ report. But sadly, as part of the Forget Me Not Families Uniting group, I know that similar recommendations have been made in the past, with no real change.

Unfortunately, there will never be a victory for families like ours, because our children are gone forever. If people truly understood the depth of our pain, along with the level of commitment we parents put into researching the overwhelming evidence, we might be taken more seriously in our fight for change.

I hope this debate forces everyone to confront the scale of the problem. Every day without action means more families torn apart, more lives lost.

Protecting young drivers, their passengers, and other road users should never be a matter of political division. It’s a moral issue. The evidence is clear: young people’s brains are still developing, making them more prone to risky decisions behind the wheel.

Protecting young drivers is not just about statistics; it’s about lives lost.”

Thank you, Crystal, for your story—we really appreciate it.

To conclude, how can we keep young people safe on our roads? There are many calls for additional training or support for newly qualified drivers. The Association of British Insurers concludes that over two thirds of insurers now employ some form of telematics, or black box, to monitor driving behaviours by new drivers to reduce risk factors. We have heard proposals to increase training and awareness of the risk on rural roads, and about the need to invest in and maintain those roads to reduce hazards. We could invest more in public transport in our rural areas to offer our young people a viable alternative mode of transport so that they can access services. Finally, there are proposals for specific safety measures, such as mandating the carrying of an emergency glass hammer in every vehicle as a new standard.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Julia Buckley]

I will not. Such a device can smash the window or cut the seatbelt in case of emergency. We could call it Harvey’s hammer, in memory of one young man from Shrewsbury whose legacy has brought us all here today.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

There will be a three-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.

09:47

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for calling this important debate. That is an incredibly difficult speech to follow, and I am feeling very emotional. I also thank all the families here today.

I have two teenage children, one of whom is now 18, and he is about to learn to drive. It is really helpful if young people in my constituency can drive themselves around, because—especially in villages such as the one he lives in—they are often at the mercy of unreliable and infrequent bus services. As his mum, I am of course encouraging him to learn: he will be able to be more independent, and it is an important life skill. But I have some really serious concerns about his safety when he starts to drive.

My constituency has a lot of A roads that are windy and fast, and they often have junctions off to the side, from which drivers are trying to pull out on to the main road. We have a history of accidents in the local area, including a horrendous one in 2023, when two young sisters were killed by an oncoming vehicle driven by someone who was high on drugs. That accident took place on a very dangerous junction outside Frome, and I am campaigning for traffic lights to be installed there, but I am coming up against a lack of council or Government funding to get the new infrastructure installed. We cannot put in the preventive measures my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) mentioned if we cannot fund them.

We know from figures provided by Brake that one in five drivers crash within a year of their test, and more than 1,500 young drivers are killed or injured on the roads each year. We know that carrying passengers or driving at night are major risk factors for younger drivers. I certainly remember careering around the roads where I grew up as a teenager, in cars packed with friends, listening to music too loudly. The thought makes me shudder when I look back on it.

Sadly, we also know that younger drivers are more likely to be involved in a crash caused by speed. Serious consideration needs to be given to graduated driving licences.

[Robin Swann]

I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing the debate. In Northern Ireland, we still have restricted driving, where a newly qualified driver must display an R plate and is restricted to 45 mph for one year after passing their test. Not everything has to be new; there are places where restrictions are working along the lines of the graduated scheme suggested by the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine).

[Anna Sabine]

That is exactly right. I am keen that when we discuss this issue, we look at good practice from other places.

Graduated driving licences can be set up in a number of ways, but typically might involve minimum periods for learning to drive, and reducing the number of passengers a young person can have in the car. In the UK, we already have a version of this system for motorbikes. We recognise that young motorcyclists probably should not ride the most powerful bikes straightaway, and we restrict them accordingly. Even motoring groups such as the RAC have supported moves towards a graduated driving licence scheme in recent times, and I intend to explore the idea in my own political party.

I totally understand why young people might resist or resent the idea of graduated driving licences. I can also see why, in rural areas such as mine or that of the hon. Member for Shrewsbury, really stringent restrictions on driving—such as preventing young people from driving at night—might make it hard for them to get to their jobs or educational settings if buses are not frequent enough. But I think the idea warrants a conversation, because young people have the most to lose if we cannot get this right.

09:50

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for bringing this really important debate to the House and for sharing so movingly the case involving the tragic death of her constituent Harvey.

Road safety is a serious concern for my constituents. In 2023, there were 183 reported injuries and one fatality on our roads. In early 2024, prior to being elected, I campaigned with local councillor Marcus Dearden and the Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, to address speeding issues in Bingley. We successfully secured average speed cameras on a 50 mph stretch of dual carriageway that was often used as a racetrack by young drivers, but it is challenging to get those sorts of road safety measures in place.

We have already heard from others about the higher risk that young drivers face. One in four deaths from collisions involves a young car driver, and we know that this is more prevalent among young men. We have also heard people speak movingly about the huge impact on families. When I was growing up, a school friend’s younger brother died tragically in a motorbike accident on the A65 between Ilkley and Burley in Wharfedale, in my constituency. His parents and brother have suffered a lifetime of grief as a result of that accident.

I strongly support the West Yorkshire Vision Zero strategy, which takes a partnership approach to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2040. It brings together the combined authority, the local authority, the emergency services and National Highways, as well as victim support services and road safety campaigners. I really hope that such approaches are implemented and supported nationally by my hon. Friend the Minister.

We need to make it easier for local people to identify speeding hotspots where speed cameras are needed and to push for them. In addition, I urge the Minister to give some consideration to post-test licence restrictions, possibly through an amendment to the Road Traffic (New Drivers) Act 1995, which has already introduced a new driver probation period of two years.

In closing, I emphasise that we must also recognise that older drivers pose a risk to themselves and others, with those over 86 posing a similar risk to young men. Perhaps I will bring that forward as a topic for future debate.

09:53

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I commend the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate.

Just three weeks after the 2024 general election, four young men were killed in Ullenwood, just outside my constituency, when their car collided with a tree. They were three 20-year-olds and one 18-year-old. “This is Andrei, my child full of dreams,” his mother said in a tribute to her son.

Of course, it is not always young people who suffer such accidents, but many suffer vicariously through the loss of their loved ones. I recall the deaths of two motorcyclists, which happened separately but within 90 minutes, on the same stretch of road on 30 August 2023. One lost his life near Ashchurch, and the other near Evesham. One was a friend of a friend. Let the record recall Philip Beer, described by his lifelong friend Richard Price as an ex-Conservative councillor in Longlevens ward, but the good type of Tory—very moderate and centrist—and someone who had voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats in recent years. He was a Spurs supporter. He left behind his wife, Louise, and his children, Izzy, Charlie and Henry.

I have previously spoken of my admiration for members of the emergency services, who selflessly put themselves in harm’s way to protect and treat others. I hope everyone in this room will spare a thought for our police officers, paramedics and firefighters who arrive at the scenes of road traffic collisions.

In July, I learned a truly shocking statistic: one in five young people will be involved in a reportable road traffic collision in the year following their driving test. In 2023 alone, there were 281 road collisions in the Tewkesbury constituency, and just under 20% involved people aged between 17 and 24—that is one young person per week, just in Tewkesbury.

Driving is popular among all demographics in my constituency. Many young people use cars to travel to school, to see their friends and to play for local sports teams. Like Shrewsbury, Tewkesbury, with its broadly dispersed towns and villages, suffers from irregular and unreliable public transport, so driving is heavily relied on. According to the Department for Transport, there has been a 24% decline in passenger journeys on local bus services in the Gloucestershire region since 2015.

We should acknowledge that, for many young people, learning to drive is a significant milestone and a source of immense pride. But it is one that exposes them to significant risk. Men aged 17 to 25 have higher rates of fatal road collisions than almost any other age group—they are second only to over-85s.

One initiative that I proudly endorse is the under-17 Pathfinder Initiative, which is active in Gloucestershire, West Mercia, Yorkshire and Humberside. It is a low-cost and socially mobile initiative, with various bursaries available so that young people of all socioeconomic backgrounds can benefit. Volunteers guide aspiring drivers through theoretical and practical training in a controlled environment, away from public roads. In August 2024, I visited the initiative in South Cerney and was driven around safely by a young lady under tuition, alongside her father.

The reduction of speed limits is controversial among drivers, and I myself sometimes find the practice frustrating. However, this cannot be about our own frustrations; rather, it must be about our children. A reduction in the speed limit on high-risk routes in Lincolnshire resulted in a 75% reduction in collisions in which someone was killed or seriously injured. For that reason, I would endorse the practice in Gloucestershire. I hope the Minister will take those statistics back to her Department, alongside my endorsements.

09:57

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond—I miss our Tuesday morning meetings. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing the debate. I am speaking because road safety for young drivers is a crucial issue in my constituency.

My constituency is semi-rural, and learning to drive is a huge part of becoming independent from one’s parents; indeed, my parents forced me to learn to drive at the age of 17 because they did not want to drive me around any more. Local transport links are not good enough: buses do not run regularly enough or late enough for young people to rely on them in order to play sport, go to college, see friends or visit local town centres at weekends. By the age of 17, many of my constituents want to be able to drive to school without having to rely on their parents. Unfortunately, that also means that my constituency has far too many tragic accidents involving young drivers.

In 2000, four teenagers died after Adam, a 17-year-old newly qualified driver, crashed his car. Adam, Jonathon, Craig and James were planning to celebrate the birthday of one of their friends just a few hours after Adam crashed. An inquest found that defects in the vehicle’s condition, tyre pressure imbalance and a comparative lack of driving experience were contributing factors to Adam’s crash. In 2017, Trudi-Mae Kennell, Ryan Barber and Will Louch died on a journey back from Snowdonia to Atherstone and an unnamed 18-year-old was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. Most recently, in 2024, a teenage boy suffered serious head injuries after his car hit a tree and caught fire in Polesworth. It was reported as miraculous that he survived the crash. All those young people had so much ahead of them, and it is sad to see that their crashes belong to a pattern.

There is so much discussion about what policies to propose to tackle this issue, but the first must be to push for our young people to wear seatbelts. Between 2019 and 2023, 16% of younger car drivers involved in serious collisions did not wear seatbelts. We need to make sure that our young people know that if they do not feel confident driving with passengers, they should not do so. We need to make sure that before passing a driving test, young people have experience of driving in the dark and with passengers. And we need to make sure we, as adults, challenge risky driving behaviour whenever we see it.

09:59

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate. Just a few weeks after my election, I received a letter from my constituent, Jane. She is a mother who has had to endure the unthinkable pain of burying her 17-year-old son. Will died in a collision in June. He was a smart and popular young man, with a passion for judo, maths and computers. My heart goes out to Jane and her family.

Jane’s son had passed his test just one month prior to his death. She told me:

“As a mother, I did everything I could to protect him. I persuaded my son not to drive with his friends in his car for the first month...I felt I could not request this for longer when his friends didn’t have such rules and it wasn’t law.”

I remember myself, when I passed my test and first went out with a group of teenage friends, how intimidating that was.

Why has the UK not taken action already? Under the coalition Government, the potential adoption of graduated driving licences was discussed, but various issues arose. One problem was the impact on less affluent young people, who may be more adversely affected by restricted driving hours—for example, working 17-year-olds who need access to a car to work at night or for early-hours shift work. How can young people who rely on carpooling to cut transport costs do so if there are passenger limitations? There are obstacles, particularly in rural areas such as the villages in my constituency of Horsham.

I support the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and my constituent Jane by joining their call for the Government to take action. We should see an impact assessment of the various graduated driving schemes, many of which are already in operation around the world, so we can make the right choice for the 60% of the public who, as polls suggest, already support them.

Finally, I thank Jane for bringing her heartbreaking story to me. It cannot be easy to campaign with a wound so recent. I would like Jane to know that it is only because of individuals such as her that we are able to have this debate, and perhaps because of them, change will come.

10:02

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I wholeheartedly commiserate with the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) about the distressing tale that she has had to tell and that the parents have had to bear.

In constituencies such as mine, Tiverton and Minehead, getting a car can often be the only way young people get to meet their friends without relying on the taxi service of mum and dad. It is integral to growing their sense of independence and self-sufficiency. Rural areas such as mine are not blessed with good public transport systems, so cars are the predominant means of transport, whether for business or leisure.

In Tiverton and Minehead, where we have almost no sixth form provision, young people often need a car to get to their place of learning. When the buses are overcrowded and sometimes late, and journeys are always long, those cars can be a powerful vehicle, literally, of academic and vocational aspiration.

Nationally, Government figures estimate that one in five young drivers will crash within a year of passing their test, and that more than 1,500 young drivers are killed or seriously injured on this country’s roads each year. In Tiverton and Minehead, over the past five years, there was a total of 244 casualties in accidents where at least one participant, not including pedestrians, was under the age of 26. Of those, 35 were serious and three were fatal.

The Government must support measures to reduce the number of tragedies caused by road traffic accidents, including investment in road safety, infrastructure and maintenance, better enforcement on speeding and law breaking, education programmes, and better safety technology in the modern industry.

To conclude, I admit that I do not have the solutions, but I have faith that we, as a Parliament, and more widely through a national conversation, can move the dial on the issue. We can find a way to protect our young people without blocking them from cars, which can provide a route to community for them. We owe it to our young people to do that, and to all those affected by road collisions. I know we can rise to the challenge that it poses.

10:04

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Before I start, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for her incredibly moving story, particularly her story about Harvey. The hearts of everyone in this Chamber today will go out to Harvey’s family for what must have been an absolutely terrible ordeal. Sadly, one does not have to go far in my constituency of Harlow to see signs of a road traffic incident—a damaged traffic island, a crushed crash barrier, a single bunch of flowers or a football scarf tied to a lamppost.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury about the issues on rural roads. Like previous speakers, my constituency is made up of urban areas, Harlow, and rural areas, such as Roydon. I have met the Roydon community speed watch team to talk about the issues they face; I will go into some of my suggestions as to how we can solve those if I have time.

In 2022, there were a total of 228 casualties in Harlow, two of which were fatalities and 51 were life-changing serious injuries. There have been over 1,000 incidents since 2018. I recognise that I do not have a lot of time, but I will briefly mention the two young gentleman who I had the pleasure to teach and who I mentioned in the Chamber a few weeks ago. The impact of losing someone so young is huge for those families and for everyone who knows and cares about them. Later in the week, there will be a debate about road safety around schools, which I look forward to taking part in, but I agree with what hon. Members have said about education.

I will finish by mentioning my pet peeve—I am sure many campaigners in the room will agree—that when an issue of road safety is raised with the relevant authority, it takes so long to get the necessary road safety interventions in place. I ask the Minister to give that some consideration.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I am afraid I must reduce the time limit to a formal two-minute limit.

10:07

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this debate.

In the words of my constituents Mark and Mandy Ogden, whose daughter Georgia died on 26 June 2020:

“The last thing we want is to parade our grief, but we need people to understand the devastation these road deaths cause.”

Georgia, known as Gee to her family, was 17. She had been out for the evening and was in a car with another teenage passenger, driven by a third teenage girl. They were all wearing their seatbelts. Mandy talks about the pain of four years now without hearing Gee’s voice, her cute laugh, her silliness and random outbursts of singing, her tantrums over something and nothing, her sassiness, her incredible dancing and performing. She speaks of a gaping hole at the loss of her daughter and of the loneliness and emptiness that she has left. It is indescribable. Mandy told me of the knock at the door and the immediate realisation of what had happened, and that the day that Gee was killed will haunt her for the rest of her days.

Sadly, there are several tributes on A roads around my constituency to other young people who have been killed in surprisingly similar circumstances. Roads in our area are dark, fast and dangerous. We cannot change the entire rural road network, certainly not in the short term, but we can change the law. Mark and Mandy are now part of Forget-me-not Families Uniting, the campaign group alluded to by previous speakers, which is calling on us to save young lives through the introduction of graduated driving licensing and through the creation of an expert panel to advise the Government on how graduated driving licensing in the UK should look.

The Department for Transport’s 2019 road safety statement noted there is evidence that graduated driving licensing schemes, where they have been introduced elsewhere, have proved very effective at improving the safety of young drivers. For example in California, where drivers aged under 18 cannot take passengers under 20 unless supervised, and in New Zealand where young and newly qualified drivers go on to a restricted licence, which means—

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Jim Shannon.

10:09

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for setting the scene, and I convey my sympathies to the families in the Gallery on the loss of their young ones. I am very sorry to hear of the horrific accident that occurred in north Wales where four young boys died.

I am concerned to put forward the issues relating to Northern Ireland. Due to the lack of experience, young people are more at risk of being in accidents. Addressing those challenges requires a combination of legislative action and educational awareness. Those are the two things I want to speak about.

In 2019, young people aged between 16 and 24 accounted for almost 21% of those killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions in Northern Ireland. Young drivers are taught to expect the unexpected and to remain cautious on the road. There have been conversations in Northern Ireland regarding enhanced driver education and whether it would benefit young people to take further driving training after they have passed their tests. That is one of the things that we are looking at.

What are the challenges on the road for young people? There is peer pressure, drug and alcohol use, and mobile phone use, but sometimes road accidents are pure misfortune. The use of mobile phones while driving can cause excessive speeding, lack of concentration and ultimately distraction, leading to an increased likelihood of a crash or collision. There is the issue of young motorists travelling late at night, which the previous Government were prepared to look at, as well as excessive speed.

There is much more that can be done, especially in our schools. My key ask of the Minister is for young people to be taught the importance of road safety. Once people hit 17 and can start driving, the freedom is immense, but we must remind them of the importance of being cautious on the roads, because they can be faced with complex and dangerous situations every day. I look forward to hearing the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), speak about their commitment to young people and to ensuring that our road safety legislation is as tight as possible.

10:11

[Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate and sharing the tragic loss of young Harvey. Ahead of this debate, I met Gillian and John McGrath, constituents of mine in Southend East and Rochford, whose daughter was tragically killed in March 2009 by a newly qualified driver. Eleanor Grace McGrath was hit by a 17-year-old driver who was showing off to his friends when he struck a crowd of children, 14 of whom experienced severe injuries. Sadly, the story and the loss of Eleanor Grace are not unique.

Following Eleanor’s death, two of her closest friends and Gillian and John set up the campaign Driving with Grace, which produced a documentary to educate our young people on the devastating impact of road collisions. The documentary has been shown to young people across Essex and has had a significant impact. I welcome the announcement of the new national road safety strategy. Will the Minister consider a P plate system, which is a key recommendation of the Driving with Grace campaign, in the next steps of the strategy? It would mean that new drivers must display a P plate for the first year after passing their test, encouraging other drivers to give them space and potentially making new drivers less likely to show off.

As a parent, I understand the constant conflict between granting young people the freedom they deserve and worrying about keeping them safe. Tragedies such as the loss of Eleanor Grace are far too common. Moving forward, we have to make changes. I am sure all Members present will join me in commending my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury on securing this debate.

10:13

[Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate.

I want to put on record the story of Sonny Crane, whose family live in my constituency, Hertford and Stortford, and whose mother, Naomi, is here in Westminster Hall today. Just over three years ago, Sonny was tragically killed in a road traffic accident, and the impact on Sonny’s family since his loss has been simply devastating. I was struck by his mother’s words when we first met:

“he went out that day, a young 19 year old boy going to enjoy Topgolf with his friends, never to return.”

Across the country, there are far too many cases like Sonny’s. We know that crashes are more likely to happen when young drivers are carrying friends in the car at night-time, and when driving conditions are difficult, but it does not need to be that way. Any death on the road is one too many. I am therefore confident that the Minister appreciates the seriousness of this issue and the need for action.

I would be grateful if the Minister could look into the best practices on young driver safety used in other countries and seek to incorporate them into her road safety strategy. I would also be grateful if she could detail in her response how the Government are supporting local leaders and communities to make our roads safer, particularly in semi-rural constituencies such as mine. Naomi told me that Sonny’s favourite phrase was, “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.” Tragically, Sonny was not with us for a long time, but I know that he is lovingly remembered by his mother, who describes him as, “Sonny by name, sunny by nature.” We can honour his memory by working to ensure that no young person is taken too soon because of a road traffic accident.

10:15

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair today, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) on securing the time for this debate today and also for reading Crystal’s testimony, which was incredibly moving.

This is a timely debate, because the road safety strategy is currently under development. Like this debate, I hope that strategy takes the approach that we should never see deaths or serious accidents on our roads as an acceptable consequence of the perceived freedoms that car ownership can bring. For young drivers in particular—although this applies to all drivers when learning—there is a focus on passing the test rather than learning how to drive. That is why the graduated approach to learning to drive is so important, because it slows things down and forces those who want to drive to focus on learning.

Globally, the graduated driving licences work. In New Zealand, they have reduced accidents for people between the ages of 15 and 19 by 23% and for those between 20 and 24 by 20%. That is quite incredible and is within the context, as has been repeated here today, that one in five new drivers will crash in their first year—an absolutely incredible statistic, if we are honest with ourselves. There will be arguments against this approach, but it should never be the case that the implementation of a graduated driver's license is framed within that argument about restricting young people’s liberty, because poor public transport should never be an excuse for exposing our young people to danger. I know action in this area will be difficult, but I really hope that the road safety strategy presents us with an opportunity to do something.

10:17

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I start by warmly congratulating my good and hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) on securing this important debate, and saying thank you for the stories that have been shared this morning. In Suffolk Coastal we are proudly rural, with A and B roads stretching the full 40 miles of the constituency. I could use my speech today to describe in great detail the danger of rural roads, but everyone has done that well and, with just two minutes, I will resist the urge. Instead, I will throw my weight behind the call that we have heard this morning for a graduated licence scheme. In places such as Suffolk, the problem is incredibly severe and our many rural roads give impetus to the need for such a scheme. Some 38% of collisions in Suffolk were a result of a young driver behind the wheel. This problem is real.

A graduated driving licence scheme would put a set of restrictions on new drivers who have recently passed their practical test for an initial period. Some of these restrictions are important for us to properly debate and give real consideration to. As we have just heard, not everyone will be in agreement, but we must accept that we need to do more to challenge these horrific statistics and to make sure that lives are saved going forward.

I will not take up any more time, but may I just personally thank everybody who has come in today and who has shared their personal stories? They have been hugely touching: as my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury said at the beginning, you have put your grief on the line to share these stories and we are deeply moved by it. Thank you so much.

10:19

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate. Road safety is not just a policy issue but a matter of life or death, and one that affects all our communities, including Birmingham Erdington.

Last October, a young driver in Erdington lost control and collided with a tree on Tyburn Road. The accident resulted in one fatality and life-changing injuries for the other person involved. Only weeks ago, near Castle Vale, a driver and a passenger fled the scene after a serious accident, leaving another young man hospitalised. Just last night, a railway bridge, which I have talked about before, was hit again, leaving trains cancelled in the area. Those incidents highlight the urgent need for action.

Every single day, five lives are lost on UK roads. That means that five families are affected and five entire communities are forever changed due to road safety failures. For young drivers, road crashes are the leading cause of death. That shocking reality demands immediate action. There are many reasons for that. The pitfalls in early adulthood include overconfidence, inexperience and the wish to take risks.

The West Midlands has appointed two commissioners to advise on road safety, so I hope we will finally start to treat these issues with the urgency they demand. We cannot wait for another tragedy to drive action. Let us honour the memories of those we have lost by making our roads safer now.

10:21

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

Once a person has passed their driving test in this country, they are simply released on to the roads. This new Parliament must act to change that.

On Boxing day 2017, a 17-year-old from Suffolk crashed his Ford Fiesta, his first car. His friends William Smedley and Jake Paxton, just 18 years old, both from Bury St Edmunds, died.

Men who have recently learned to drive are at high risk of accidents. Graduated drivers licences have been adopted in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. They work so well at reducing accidents that they are being expanded all over the place and states are progressively adopting stricter rules. From December 2024, Western Australia, which previously had the most lenient system of licensing in the country, placed limits on the number of passengers that someone could carry. The legislation is known as Tom’s law, in reference to Tom Saffioti, a 15-year-old boy who died in a crash while a passenger in a car driven by a new driver.

In the UK, drivers can display a P plate after passing the test, but those come with no additional rules. Let us graduate the licence for drivers in the UK. That is not the nanny state; it is simply good government. Everyone in room seems to agree, so let us make it happen.

10:22

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for her eloquent and emotional speech.

The issue being discussed today is not new. Many years ago, when I attended a school reunion, I was told that two of my schoolmates had died in road traffic accidents very young. One was on the way to see his son. Those young lives were lost, and the families were devastated.

Young male car drivers are four times more likely to be killed or seriously injured than other car drivers aged 25 or over. We have already discussed the prospect of having a graduated driving licence, and there is precedent for that in countries that have already been mentioned. We could have a two-year probation period with N plates, lower drink-drive limits and monitoring to ensure that young drivers do not drive late at night. Other measures we could take include having limits on engine sizes to reduce the driving of powerful vehicles and making the use of P plates mandatory for a set period after passing the test.

Young drivers represent just over 5% of those who have a full UK driving licence, but 20% of drivers involved in fatal or serious collisions. Although the Department for Transport rejected a graduated driving licence in 2020, it is time to reconsider that proposal. Young drivers have their whole lives in front of them in which they can drive as many cars as they want, so let us help them to do that without being killed and without killing others in the process.

10:24

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

I do not want to rehearse the points that have already been made so eloquently by my colleagues from across Westminster Hall. I merely want to say that education has been mentioned briefly, but given that almost all road collisions, and therefore deaths and serious injuries, are preventable, I hope the Minister will do everything she can, as she considers the road safety strategy, to ensure that all available resources are given to local authorities, to police and crime commissioners and to police forces so that they can into schools and reach our young people.

I will also just mention that Warwickshire county council has a safe and active schools programme that looks at primary school age groups and “The Journey” for secondary schools. The police and crime commissioner has a focus on young people in his road safety strategy. Every effort must be made to make an impression upon impressionable young minds from as early as possible, so that we can reduce the risk of these tragic deaths.

10:26

[Claire Hughes (Bangor Aberconwy) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for securing this important debate, and specifically for mentioning road safety on rural roads.

Sadly, nowhere is the devastating impact of crashes on rural roads better demonstrated than by telling Olivia’s story. Olivia Alkir, a much-loved 17-year-old, was denied her bright future when she was killed in the passenger seat of a friend’s car. The driver had been racing on another rural road when he lost control and crashed head-on into an approaching vehicle at 80 mph. He had only passed his driving test the day before. Olivia’s tragic death in 2019 devastated her family, of course, but also the wider community of Efenechtyd, near Ruthin.

Olivia’s mother, Jo, is determined that her daughter’s story will save other people’s lives. I am sure that it already has saved lives, because Olivia’s family decided to work with North Wales Police to create a hard-hitting film designed to warn other young people about the dangers of reckless driving. Olivia’s story has been shown to learner drivers in schools all across Wales and indeed in this House, thanks to the work of my predecessor, Simon Baynes, who represented what was then the constituency of Clwyd South.

Olivia’s story brings into sharp focus the need for action. I welcome the new Government’s road safety review and I implore the Minister to leave no stone unturned in her mission to improve road safety for young people, including learning from other countries, listening to campaigners such as Crystal Owen and considering the use of emerging technologies, such as AI and telematics, which are developing all the time.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the debate and to seeing further action in the coming months.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

I call Alison Bennett, spokesperson for the Lib Dems.

10:27

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Desmond, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) on securing this really important debate. I also thank Crystal for sharing her heartbreaking testimony.

I am now old enough to have been driving for 30 years and during the debate I have been reflecting on the joy I felt when I passed my driving test, aged 17. I grew up in Gloucestershire, so to pass my test and be able to travel around the county, meeting friends in Gloucester, Stroud and Tewkesbury, truly was a liberation. How lucky I was. However, two of my classmates, Paul Torrington and Lee Mortimer, were far less lucky than me. A few years after leaving school both were killed, in separate road traffic accidents, and I also reflect today on the opportunities I have had in the past 30 years that they have missed out on.

Between 2004 and 2023, fatalities involving younger drivers decreased by 60%—a true testament to the effectiveness of education, awareness-raising and the tireless efforts of campaigners. Despite that improvement, however, last year road traffic accidents still claimed the lives of 1,624 people across the UK, so there is clearly still work to do. As we have already heard, young drivers—especially young men—aged between 17 and 25 are over-represented in such statistics.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

May I express my sadness and join others in commemorating constituents lost? I would like to name Sammy Phillips and Lewis Moghul, who died in Bix, just metres from where I lived at the time. As a father, I can express sympathy, but I can never really, truly understand such pain. Other Members have spoken of the particular hazards that drivers face on rural roads, including the darkness, narrowness, higher speed limits and other dangers. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful to look specifically at the dangers on rural roads?

[Alison Bennett]

I absolutely agree that, as we have heard from a number of Members this morning, the risks of rural roads are particularly profound.

We need to find ways to protect people on rural roads and all other people who share those roads with drivers, and today we have had the chance to reflect on the tragic deaths of Hugo, Harvey, Wilf and Jevon. We are also here to remember every other one of those 1,625 people who lost their lives on British roads last year and the countless more in years gone by.

In my own constituency of Mid Sussex, I recently met Marie, who lost her 22-year-old son in December 2014 to a road traffic accident. He was a backseat passenger in a car being driven by a newly qualified driver, who was 21. He was driving in excess of 100 mph on a country lane when he lost control. The car landed on its roof, and the two passengers in the back lost their lives. Marie’s son left behind two young boys; one was eight months old at the time, and the other was five years old. As we have heard, we can and must learn from these terrible events.

With our remarkable progress in reducing road fatalities over the past few decades, the UK now boasts one of the lowest road death rates per 1 million people in Europe. However, every death is one too many, and we must use this improvement as inspiration that better is possible and that change saves lives, not as a reason to sit on our laurels and say, “Job well done.” My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I are firm in our belief that we need the Government to publish a road safety strategy without delay. Such strategies have previously delivered significant improvements in road safety. For instance, the Road Safety Observatory has noted a significant decline in road fatalities since the 1990s thanks to the 2000 road safety strategy, which delivered campaigns, such as THINK!, infrastructure improvements and more rigorous driving tests.

An updated strategy would surely be transformative in further reducing accidents and saving lives. Crucially, it would need to focus heavily on rural areas, where 60% of fatal collisions occur. We have seen success with the introduction of measures such as stricter drink-driving laws, seatbelt legislation and tougher driving tests, but we absolutely must improve public transport options to reduce our reliance on cars.

Young people, particularly those in rural areas, should not have to rely on dangerous journeys to get to work or education or to see friends, yet the sharp decline in bus services under the previous Government coupled with rising fares has made it harder for many young people to get around safely. In West Sussex, for example, we have seen a nearly 20% drop in available passenger journeys since 2015. Young people are simply so much more likely to end up driving when there are no decent alternatives. We can solve that by maintaining the £2 cap on bus fares, reopening smaller train stations and offering on-demand services where conventional buses are not viable.

Rural roads would also benefit greatly from better infrastructure, such as the installation of more overtaking lanes, as the RSO has suggested. As well as broader infrastructure strategies, we must embrace new ideas. One of the standout proposals today is Harvey’s hammer, which could be a game changer in saving lives and creating a more safety-conscious culture, especially among young drivers. New technology, coupled with better enforcement of speed limits, education programmes for all road users and investment in safer roads and vehicles, all of which have a proven track record of success, provide hope that we can do so much more in the years to come.

My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have long championed road safety measures, and we will continue to do so. Marie, her son’s young family and the families of Hugo, Harvey, Wilf and Jevon are in our hearts as we strive for effective change. The Government must support measures to make these tragedies a rarity and support proposals such as Harvey’s hammer, which has the potential to save lives when these terrible events take place.

As hon. Members have set out today, we know that young people face disproportionate risks on the roads, but they should not be punished for it. Instead, we must give them the tools to stay safe. Let us focus on improving public infrastructure, enforcing road safety rules and providing better public transport options, using a new road safety strategy. We owe it to the memory of all young people whose lives have been cut short, to their families, and to all who care about saving innocent lives.

10:35

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) on bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall this morning. I thank all those who have contributed with powerful speeches. My heart goes out to any family who have lost a child or relative in a road accident. Every single death is a tragedy that should spur us on to do more to prevent future deaths and injuries, and make our roads safer. I cannot imagine the pain of any family getting the knock on the door from a police officer, or however the news is broken to them, to tell them that a child has died on our roads, as in this case, or under any other circumstances.

We must always look at practical measures to improve road safety through the lens of “To drive is freedom”. To drive brings opportunity. For many—I include myself in this—to drive brings pleasure. Our challenge is: what will protect those freedoms, opportunities and pleasures in a safer way?

[Mrs Russell]

Mandy Ogden said to me:

“Often, the main argument against this change to driver licensing is that it restricts freedom, but our daughter’s freedom has been taken away forever.”

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that, too, is an important point?

[Greg Smith]

In a few moments, I will come on to the measures that I think would protect the freedom to drive far better, as well as the safety of those who do so. There will perhaps not be agreement with every single point that hon. Members have made in the debate, but I repeat the point. Central to how I would like to look at this issue is not how we can restrict people more, but how we can make people safer in the first place by ensuring that they have the skills required to drive safely, be it in our cities and towns, on our rural roads and motorways, or indeed abroad, where often the rules can be very different. We all know the example of the German autobahns, many of which have no speed limit. It is vital to equip any British citizen going to Germany with the ability to handle a car at very great speed and be safe on those roads.

The challenge before us is how to make everybody—young people, for sure, but also old people, for whom the statistics are just as stark, as the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) mentioned—safer and able to handle a vehicle in all conditions on our roads.

[Dr Arthur]

Back in 2020, an older driver caused a fatality in Edinburgh, killing a three-year-old boy. The fatal accident inquiry found that drivers over 80 should perhaps be subject to cognitive tests if they want to continue driving. That inquiry is currently with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Will the shadow Minister support action in that area?

[Greg Smith]

It is important that we look at all evidence suggesting a problem and explore the basis for solving it, but I am no fan of knee-jerk legislation. This House is at its worst when we jump to knee-jerk solutions to any problem presented. It is important to look at all the evidence, practical outcomes and potential unintended consequences. The case that the hon. Gentleman raises and the point that he makes are important and should be looked at—as he referenced, it is being looked at by the DVLA at the moment. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that point.

I double-underline that we should bear in mind that every death on our roads is a tragedy, but there has been significant improvement in road safety over recent years.

[Anna Sabine]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Greg Smith]

I will just expand this point and then give way to the hon. Lady. Since road user casualties peaked in 1965, with nearly 8,000 deaths, there has been a concerted efforts to reduce the numbers. Thankfully, that effort has largely been successful, across successive Governments of all political persuasions.

According to Department for Transport figures, released in September last year, Great Britain ranked third out of 33 countries reported on in 2023 for the lowest number of road fatalities per million of the population. Of course, that number is still too high, but the direction of travel is positive, and we need to take further action—

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Greg Smith]

I promised to give way to the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), and will just finish this point. Mindful of time, I may then take one or two more interventions.

Although the claim of a 13% fall in casualties accurately reflects the raw data between 2010 and 2023, it fails to account for the context of vehicle miles, which have significantly increased. During that time, the number of vehicle miles increased from 306 billion to 334 billion. When adjusted to that context, the Department’s data indicates a decrease in the casualty rate from 681 casualties per billion vehicle miles in 2010 to 398 in 2023, which is a 41% reduction. I repeat that we must still take action to get the number down to zero, but the direction of travel has been good.

[Anna Sabine]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the personal tragedies of road accidents and refers to Members of all political persuasions. Does he agree that it is brilliant to see cross-party support for these campaigns, but that it might be more helpful for campaigners if His Majesty’s Opposition were better represented in today’s debate?

[Greg Smith]

I hesitate to go there, on what is a political point. When we are having a serious debate, comments like that are not necessarily helpful to the spirit of trying to engender cross-party working.

I have a history of looking at this subject, including with the Minister for the future of roads. In the previous Parliament, we both served on the Transport Committee, which conducted a deep inquiry into novice and young drivers and the implications for safety. We looked carefully at graduated driving licences and other things, such as the Under 17 Car Club, which was referred to earlier, and which I am a huge fan of. I am a huge fan of trying to get young people—potentially very young people—in an off-road, safe, private-land setting and starting to understand how to drive and control a vehicle safely.

[Cameron Thomas]

I did not manage to make this point in my speech, but whereas one in five young people will be involved in a reportable road traffic collision in the year following their test, that figure is reduced to one in 33 for those who complete that course. I invite the hon. Member to agree.

[Greg Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, and I entirely agree. The younger we can get people into any sort of powered vehicle, so that they can learn how to control it safely in different conditions in a safe, off-road, heavily supervised setting, the better. That work is all to the good and powerful, and I was certainly impressed by the evidence I heard in that Select Committee inquiry.

That raises a wider point that I invite the Minister to reflect on. I think it was encapsulated well by the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) when he said that young people are focused on passing a test rather than learning to drive. Our testing and learning system is too focused on a very limited set of circumstances that any individual seeking their first driving licence has to go through. Testing is done very often in an urban environment, but rarely on the rural roads that we have heard so much about, and learner drivers never go on the motorway and learn to control a car at significant speeds. My challenge to the Minister is this: how can we ensure that when a young person—or any person, for that matter—is granted their pass certificate and gets their full driving licence, they are properly equipped? To me, the solution is not putting in a graduated system afterwards; it is having the confidence that, when someone is issued with their licence, they are able and safe to control any motor vehicle to the best of their ability.

Graduated driving licences would take away too much from young people. We heard from young people in the Select Committee inquiry that I spoke about. What if a young person wants to go into the world of work? What if they want to do night shifts but are told they cannot drive at night? What if they wish to go into one of the emergency services and have to attend night-time emergencies, be that as a police officer—

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

With the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Greg Smith]

I have limited time, but I am happy to take up the debate afterwards.

What if the path that a young person wants to go down requires them to be able to drive a car at night? There have to be answers to these questions. I gently say to all hon. Members here this morning, including the Minister, that a driving licence must be equal for everybody, and that we must look most of all at how we can improve our confidence that everybody who is issued with one can control a vehicle in all circumstances, in all conditions and on all road types. That will involve a significant change, which will improve road safety for everybody.

10:47

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Lilian Greenwood)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this morning, Sir Desmond. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) on securing the debate and thank her for continuing to raise the vital issue of road safety. It is clear from the number of hon. Members present— I counted 26 contributions, but I may be wrong—that this is, rightly, an issue of huge public concern. I thank all those who made moving and compelling contributions. I also congratulate my hon. Friend for championing the excellent work that her constituent Crystal Owen is doing to highlight young driver safety following the tragic death of her son, Harvey.

In recent months I have been grateful to have the opportunity to meet with my hon. Friend, with Crystal and other members of Forget-me-not Families Uniting, including Sharron Huddleston and Dr Ian Greenwood, both of whom are here today, and with a number of other families whose lives have been affected by road death. Crystal, Ian, Sharron and many other families are in the Public Gallery, and my heart goes out to all of them. I thank them for taking the time to meet me, for their courage in sharing their heartbreaking stories, either with me or with their constituency MPs, and for their determination to make sure that other families do not face the same grief. It is vital that victims’ voices are heard and their experiences shared, as they have been so movingly today. I am committed to continuing to engage as we develop our policies in this area.

I am sure that many of us remember reading about the deaths of Harvey Owen, Wilfred Fitchett, Jevon Hirst and Hugo Morris in November 2023, and no one could fail to be moved by hearing that terrible story again today in Crystal’s own words. It is literally every parent’s worst nightmare. The deaths of those four young men have had a devastating impact on their families and community, as have the deaths of other young people we have spoken about today. I am determined to take action to prevent such deaths in the future, and improving road safety is one of my Department’s highest priorities.

Despite the two-year probation period for all new drivers that was introduced in 1995, in terms of population and number of miles driven, 17 to 24-year olds, and particularly young men, remain one of the highest fatality-risk groups, both as car drivers and as passengers. Although the latest statistics show that the number of young drivers killed on our roads has fallen by 80% since 1990, that cannot be a reason for complacency. The number of deaths in 2023 was 90, but that is 90 too many. Every one of those young lives lost leaves a devastated family, and often many families, including those of the passengers and other road users. There is a pressing need for action.

Although we are not considering graduated driving licences, we absolutely recognise that young people are disproportionately the victims of tragic collisions on our roads, which is why we are exploring options to tackle the root causes of the issue without unfairly penalising young drivers. The Government want to ensure young people’s access to employment, education and other opportunities while keeping them safe on the roads.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and other hon. Members, particularly those representing rural and semi-rural areas, said, that means giving young people more choices by investing in public transport and active travel. The Government have already begun to do that by announcing additional funding for buses, walking and cycling in the Budget, but of course that goes alongside specific road safety measures.

Those efforts are supported by Driver2020, the Department’s largest young driver research project, which evaluated a range of interventions to improve the safety of young drivers. The project tested the effectiveness of five non-legislative measures aimed at improving safety for young and novice drivers, including keeping a log book, extra hazard perception training, classroom-based education, mentoring agreements and telematics. Driver2020 began in January 2019, and more than 28,000 participants were recruited. The project was delayed by the pandemic, but the Department has now received the final report, which will inform our considerations. As a number of hon. Members said, we can also look to international experience. For example, a number of countries have a lower or zero alcohol limit for young drivers, or a minimum learning period.

Our THINK! campaign does important work to encourage safer attitudes and behaviours among young drivers. Its innovative campaigns are highly targeted to reach young men aged 17 to 24. People sometimes tell me, “I don’t feel that I have seen some of those campaigns,” but that perhaps is because they are not on the channels of the people we are most keen to target. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that we have just launched the latest phase of our speeding campaign, which highlights the risk of driving too fast for the conditions of rural roads. As hon. Members have said, those circumstances contribute to high numbers of young driver casualties.

A number of hon. Members also talked about action to reduce speed, including lower speed limits, and to enforce speed limits, such as speed cameras. Improving our roads, changing speed limits and installing speed cameras are decisions for local traffic authorities. Obviously, they want to make those decisions in consultation with local communities and the local police. They know their roads best, and I cannot and should not dictate to them from Whitehall. However, I agree that such partnerships are essential and that they should be looking at local-level interventions to make our roads safer. The Department will look at what more we can do to support them, and we stand ready to work with all those working at a local level.

THINK! campaigns have shown positive results, but we know that changing ingrained attitudes and behaviours takes time. This year, we are doing even more to land the vital messages, including working with content creators and influential platforms such as LADbible to tackle speeding via the voices that young audiences trust. Before Christmas, THINK! launched a major new drink-driving campaign, which highlighted the risk of losing one’s licence after drinking even a little before driving, and the subsequent impact on the freedoms that we know mean a lot to young drivers. As a number of hon. Members have said, we also need to address other dangerous behaviours, including failing to wear a seatbelt, using a mobile phone while driving and taking drugs before driving, which sadly is a growing problem. We need to use every opportunity to educate young people about road safety, and that involves working with mayors, local councils, police and crime commissioners, police, schools, colleges, charities, and the many parents and families who have generously used their tragic experience to try to help others make better choices.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency delivers a wide range of support targeted at keeping young drivers safe. The Ready to Pass? campaign helps learner drivers to assess when they are ready to take their test, and provides lots of useful information about safe driving for life. Many people have talked about the importance of driving in different road conditions, on rural roads, at night and in the dark. Pass Plus provides further education for drivers once they have passed their test. It is clear to me that we should consider what more can be done to support learner drivers and newly qualified drivers to be safe. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury raised the potential for measures to improve vehicle safety, such as the installation of a Harvey’s hammer device. I will take that suggestion back to my officials for further consideration and write to my hon. Friend.

In my short time as Minister for the Future of Roads, I have heard too many heartbreaking accounts of loss and serious injury. We have been very moved to hear during this debate stories of hon. Members’ constituents who have lost loved ones. I again thank all those Members who came to the debate to share them. It is vital that we hear the voices of those who have been most impacted by road deaths. I assure them that I am listening.

I want to assure everyone listening, but especially those who have been affected by road deaths and injuries, that this Government treat road safety with utmost seriousness. We are committed to reducing the numbers of those killed and seriously injured on our roads. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) said, we can never regard road deaths as inevitable. The majority of road crashes are avoidable, and that is why the Department is developing our road safety strategy. It will be the first in over a decade, and we will set out more details in due course. We will adopt a safe system approach. We need all partners working together—policymakers, road engineers and designers, vehicle manufacturers, the police and road users.

I will be pleased to keep in touch with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and other hon. Members as we progress our work on road safety and young drivers. I congratulate her once again on securing this important debate.

10:59

[Julia Buckley]

I thank all Members who have taken the time to listen and contribute to the debate, and I thank the bereaved families and campaigners for their time and for listening again to stories that can only be upsetting. I also thank the Minister for her time. I could hear in her summing-up that she was clearly listening to the messages that we put forward today, and we thank her for that. I am particularly pleased to hear that she might consider Harvey’s hammer as a safety measure. I hope that she made note, too, of the local initiative that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) described. I do not know whether it features in Driver2020, but that educational IT piece takes the rate of post-test driving collisions from one in five to one in 33.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Solar Farms: Agricultural Land

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

11:01

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered solar farms on agricultural land.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. We are addressing an issue of great importance: the proliferation of solar farms on our agricultural land.

As many hon. Members know, I have dedicated much of my life to raising awareness about our ecological and climate crises. I have met people who are set to lose their entire countries to rising seas. Let me be clear: nobody can doubt my commitment to strong action on climate change. However, there are many ways to skin the climate cat, and I do not believe that solar parks on the scale of Cottam, Cleve Hill, Longfield, Mallard Pass, Gate Burton, Sunnica and the proposed Lime Down, in my own constituency of South Cotswolds, are the best way forward.

I have received numerous messages from residents near the proposed site of Lime Down. Without exception, they are distressed about the proposal, and I share their concerns. They are not nimbys; they are thoughtful, environmentally conscious people, who, like me, agree that we need renewables but at the right size, in the right places and in the right ownership.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Like my hon. Friend, I am very keen on renewable energy. I am a Liberal Democrat, for heaven’s sake! However, I am also a pragmatist. In Washford, in my constituency, a massive solar farm is being built on particularly good agricultural land. Would my hon. Friend agree that we must be practical and put solar panels on commercial buildings and residential houses, rather than on farmland?

[Dr Savage]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I totally agree and will be coming to that point shortly.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. I suppose the issue is twofold. First, the farmers who sign up to solar farms are committed to a long-term lease, and that will impact the family inheritance tax potential. The second point comes in relation to using land better for food production, as it should be used, so that only land that is of a lesser quality, or rocky land, would be more suitable for solar farms. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is the way forward?

[Dr Savage]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I agree that that is the way forward.

Let us consider the facts. Our agricultural land is dwindling at an alarming rate. We are down to 14.8 million acres of arable land, the lowest amount since world war two, and we are losing nearly 100,000 acres annually. We already import nearly 60% of our food. Do we really want to increase that dependency on foreign supply chains?

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is being super generous and I am grateful to her. She makes excellent points. We obviously have means by which we can control how those things happen, through the environmental land management payment scheme and planning law. Would she agree that, through both of those streams, we should be able to ensure that food security is at least as important as energy security, and that we should not be using productive agricultural land for solar farms when they can be developed elsewhere? Westmorland and Furness Council, for example, has used disused land to provide a solar farm of its own on non-agricultural land.

[Dr Savage]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we should be prioritising locations that do not impact on our ability to meet our food security needs.

The environmental benefits of solar farms are not as clearcut as some would have us believe. Yes, they produce clean energy, but at what cost? Large installations can alter local ecosystems, potentially contaminate soil and even increase local temperatures due to heat absorption by the dark panels—and let us not forget the human cost. Tenant farmers face eviction. Land values are skyrocketing, making it harder for new farmers to enter the industry, and we risk losing the very character of our rural communities that underpins local tourism and our national identity.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I agree with every word the hon. Lady has said so far. Does she agree with me that if we are to protect food security and give it equal billing with energy security and national security, not just solar installations are inappropriate, but the ancillary projects like those I am seeing in my constituency? For example, we have battery storage and National Grid coming along and saying it has to completely rebuild all of the substations on—guess what?—more agricultural land. This is a much bigger problem than just solar.

[Dr Savage]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member’s points. I am not against solar energy—far from it—but we need to be smart about how we implement it and all the associated infrastructure. Why not require all new homes to be fitted with solar panels, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) in his sunshine Bill? Why not use the vast roof spaces of warehouses, public buildings and car parks? These are sensible, minimally intrusive ways to contribute to our net zero goals.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

I will confess that before being elected to this place, I spent 10 years in renewable energy finance. It is a common claim from certain activists and newspapers that we should put solar on commercial buildings. I do not disagree with that. The problem is the economics of it do not stand up from a finance perspective. Until the Government step in to guarantee a minimum amount of value for export, rooftop solar will never stack up. Neither will carport solar. That is why investors will always go for utility-scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we actually want to see a catalyst, if we want to see a change, if we want to see farmers growing crops and not solar panels, the Government need to step in and regulate the market?

[Dr Savage]

My hon. Friend makes some very interesting points that I look forward to exploring further with him in the future. I agree that we need Government to intervene to adjust the incentives so that we can meet our energy needs with the lowest cost to our countryside.

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Part of the barrier to public acceptance of large-scale solar farms comes from a need to see a joined-up approach and that we are balancing food security and energy security. What people want to see—for example, in my constituency with the large proposed Kingsway solar farm—is the much promised land use framework and the strategic spatial energy framework, so that they know where the 0.1% should go and that it is going in the right places, that there is a joined-up approach, and therefore that reasonable people can support it where necessary.

[Dr Savage]

I am sure we are all waiting with bated breath for the long-awaited land use framework.

The National Farmers Union is well aware that British farmers host about 70% of this country’s solar generation capacity, but it is urging the Government to recognise that small-scale energy needs to be prioritised on brownfield sites and lower quality land first. Let us not forget about other nature-based solutions such as rewilding or planting 60 million trees per year. That would not only help to absorb carbon, but restore valuable habitats.

We do need to increase our use of renewables. However, it must be done sympathetically to the environment and should provide, as a priority, community energy to homes, schools and businesses. We have a real opportunity with the land use framework to define our national priorities for the long-term future, emphasising ways of multi-purposing land with ideas like intercropping, living roofs and rooftop solar.

We absolutely need cross-party consensus. The question of meeting future energy needs while not trashing the climate, our countryside or food production is too important to become a political football. The English countryside is currently at risk of being exploited for financial gain by profit-making companies—a corporate wolf dressed in green clothing. We must not allow that to continue unchecked.

11:10

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Sarah Jones)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on securing this important debate and the number of interventions she received in such a short period of time reflects the strength of feeling.

Before I set out the Government’s approach, I reassure the hon. Lady and her constituents that we agree on most things in this space. We agree that we should be using renewables—whatever they are, wherever they are—in the best way possible. We agree that we need to look at our responsibilities in terms of the climate, agriculture, the countryside and food production. The Government take all those responsibilities very seriously and look them at very carefully. We agree that if we are building solar panels, for example, we should build on brownfield sites first. If we cannot, we should build on areas of lower-quality land first. We agree that food security is enormously important for this country. In the global conditions we find ourselves in, where there is more uncertainty—as we saw with the war in Ukraine and what followed with our energy prices—we need to be mindful of those things. When it comes to the principles, we agree.

I will set out the Government’s overall approach to our clean power mission, which might help to put the debate in context. We, like the hon. Member for South Cotswolds, have been clear from the start that the only way to tackle climate change, secure our energy supply, bring down bills and drive economic growth is through clean energy. The rapid deployment of clean energy infrastructure is essential for our future security and economy.

[Greg Smith]

Is it not the case that the Government are just plumping for the technology that is available right now, in the form of thousands of acres of solar, when we need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough electricity for just 50,000 homes on current usage? A small modular reactor needs just two football pitches for 1 million homes. As I have said many times, why on earth are the Government messing about with solar given its impacts on food security, which the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) mentioned?

[Sarah Jones]

The previous Government messed around with solar quite a lot—we are building on what the previous Government did, up to a point. The answer is to look at all the technologies that are available to us. SMRs are enormously attractive in lots of different ways, and lots of colleagues have been talking to us about them. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is a process for the development of SMRs. We need all the tools in our armoury and we need to make sure we are using the most modern technology available. He makes a fair point on that front.

Sustainable power generated here in Britain will reduce our contribution to the damaging effects of climate change and our dependence on the volatile global fossil fuel market. It is already creating thousands of highly skilled jobs and will continue to do so. Instead of delaying the inevitable, we have set ourselves a target to push to clean power by 2030. The clean power action plan, published last month, sets out how we will get there, including the likely technology mix required. It is clear that solar will play a major role.

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

On the Minister’s comments about the Government’s announcements in December and the subsequent announcement by the National Energy System Operator about moving forward rapidly with renewable energy, and in relation to East Park Energy, which is a proposal in my constituency whereby 74% of the land used would be best and most versatile land, in neither the December statement nor the January announcement by NESO was there any reference at all to the criterion on use of best and most versatile land. Can the Minister just affirm that that criterion is still used in the assessment of which projects the Government will move forward?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I cannot comment on the individual case in his constituency, of course. But of course when developers are applying for planning permission, they go through a series of criteria and have to adhere to a series of criteria, whether that is for the development of smaller solar plants, where it goes through local authorities, or whether it is through the nationally significant infrastructure project process. The solar taskforce is looking at all these issues as well. We are making sure we are mindful of all of the range of issues that we need to consider when we are looking at bringing infrastructure into communities. I will come to this later, but it is really important to say that we want to do this with local communities—with consultation of local communities and with consideration of what other options are available to us as well. That will continue.

Solar is one of the cheapest sources of power available to us, which is an important consideration when we are looking at the full range of options that we have between us. We are setting a target for around 45 GW to 47 GW of solar power by 2030. That is up from the 17 GW that we have today and it is a substantial increase.

I want to tackle the issue that a number of Members mentioned—the rooftop versus ground-mount issue. The hon. Member for South Cotswolds is right to talk about how we need to be going further to make sure we are putting solar panels on our roofs, and to ask what Government can do to encourage that. We are bringing in new building standards to ensure that all newly built houses and commercial buildings are fit for a net zero future. We expect those standards to encourage the installation of solar panels on new developments. We are issuing later this year a call for evidence on the construction of solar on outdoor car parks. The reconvened solar taskforce is focusing on rooftop solar, and further actions to increase deployment will be set out in the road map this spring.

I was talking to one of our big mayoral authorities yesterday about the power purchase agreements that people could potentially have in this space. If people look at public sector roofs and the collaboration they could have across some of our transport infrastructure and some of our public sector infrastructure, they could do more ambitious projects when it comes to solar, and of course we want to push that as much as we can. If we can put solar panels on rooftops, that is what we want to do. But we consider that we need a mix of both: we need ground-mounted and rooftop panels to get to the numbers that we want to see.

Let me turn to the planning system. All proposed solar projects are subject to a rigorous planning process, which considers the interests of local communities, as I said to the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller).

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

In my constituency of Huntingdon, a new solar farm of 1,900 acres is proposed. It spans from my constituency across into North Bedfordshire, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) represents. The local population have spent a lot of time liaising with both me and my hon. Friend with regard to the impact that it will have and the lack of consultation that they have experienced. They have been told that realistically, they will receive no real benefit from the solar farm’s being there. They will certainly not receive directly cheaper energy bills for having it built right on their doorstep. What would the Minister say to those constituents, and the constituents of the other Members in this room, who are in effect having nationally significant infrastructure projects foisted on them and who do not feel that they have a say or any real ability to push back on that?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He expresses a concern that local Members of Parliament will always have when constituents come to them with issues. Look, we are balancing an issue when it comes to solar. At the moment, about 0.1% of all our land in the UK—and, it turns out, about 0.1% of all agricultural land as a proportion as well—has solar on it. Even if we were to reach our targets or go beyond them, it would still be less than 1% of land. We have to look at that statistic, but we also have to look at the local situation, which is where we absolutely accept that we are asking people to have infrastructure in their communities that will affect them. It could change their view, change their roles or change the jobs that are available; it has an impact. Through our clean power action plan, we are looking at the community benefit systems that we need to put in place. I cannot speak to the hon. Gentleman’s particular case because it is going through a process and it would not be right for me to do so, but I am mindful of what he says about the need for communities to feel like they will have some direct benefits and to understand why we need some of this infrastructure.

The reality is that we have not kept up to speed with infrastructure developments in this country over the past couple of decades, and we need to move faster. Whether it is our grid system, renewable energy or our transport systems, we need to build these things for our children and grandchildren to have the future that we want to see. Of course we need to be mindful of the impact and how local people feel. That is why, for the nationally significant infrastructure projects, there is still consultation and strong engagement with communities. That needs to get better, and we are looking at that through our clean power action plan.

I am mindful of the time. I want to move on to food security, which the hon. Member for South Cotswolds mentioned. Food security is national security, and it is very important for this Government. We need a resilient and healthy food system that works with nature and supports British farmers, fishers and food producers. That is why the Government will introduce a new deal for farmers to boost rural economic growth and strengthen Britain’s food security.

[Tim Farron]

The Minister is being very generous; I am grateful. The concern is that farmers are often pushed into things that they would not choose initially—such as giving over productive agricultural land for stuff that is not food production. Because of the perversity of Government funding changes, perhaps the most egregious thing in the Budget was the 76% cut in the basic payment for farmers this year, which will make many of them feel that their hand is forced to go down a direction that they do not want to go down. Might the Minister have a word with the Treasury to see whether that cut could be taken away?

[Sarah Jones]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point. The wider point about farmers being pushed according to EU or local subsidies over the years is of course right, and we need to get the balance right. I will speak to the numbers again: we are looking to go from 17 GW to around 45 GW, which is a trebling of the current land use of 0.1%. We are talking about small numbers, although I appreciate that in some constituencies, such as that of the hon. Member for South Cotswolds, it will feel much bigger because there are more of these products coming along.

Of course we need to get our system right for farmers. I am a Member of Parliament in Croydon, where we do not have many farmers, but I am incredibly grateful to them for their role and the work that they do, and we need to make sure that we support them. Where it is necessary to develop agricultural land—and we need to start with the basics of using other land first where we can—we do not think it will have any significant impact on food security because of the numbers: less than 1% of the UK’s agricultural land will be occupied by solar farms. We do not believe that will have an impact on our food security.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Jones]

I will finish my point, because it is connected to the point made by the hon. Member for South Cotswolds. The biggest threat to British farmers in the countryside is not solar farms; it is the impact of climate change, and we are already seeing the effects in the floods and droughts that are threatening their livelihoods. We have to be mindful of that when we are trying to tackle climate change and increase the use of solar.

[Adrian Ramsay]

I appreciate the principles that the Minister is setting out, particularly on the impact of climate change on food security. Every model of net zero energy that I have seen includes a greater role for renewable energy on land, but is there not a risk that without a clear land use strategy that shows how we will achieve a resilient food supply while meeting net zero targets, decisions about where solar farms are located will end up getting made on a piecemeal basis, rather than the basis that the Minister is setting out?

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman has predicted that I was about to talk about the land use framework. He is right. The Government recognise that England has limited land, and the use demands on it include our vital clean energy infrastructure. The Government will deliver our manifesto commitment by introducing a land use framework so that we can consider how to balance competing demands and transform how we use land. That will support economic growth and deliver on the plan for change that the Prime Minister outlined last month. The framework will work hand in hand with the strategic spatial energy plan, which we have commissioned the National Energy System Operator to devise. The hon. Gentleman is right that we have to understand the whole before we make piecemeal decisions, and our criticism of the previous Government is that those overarching plans were lacking.

[Pippa Heylings]

On that point, would it therefore be right to consider not overruling the Planning Inspectorate just now, in the build-up to receiving the land use framework and the strategic spatial energy plan from NESO, before making these big infrastructure decisions? We would take the public with us if they understood that we will decide where solar farms go once we have the land use framework and the strategic spatial energy plan.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. We already have a planning system that enables us to look at individual projects. The new Government will set those strategic frameworks, but we have to allow the legal processes to continue while we do that. We will see an increase in the push to 2030 and beyond that. We want to see, through good government, a proper national framework that puts these issues in place.

I want to touch again on the community benefits, which hon. Members have raised. I cannot stress enough that communities hosting clean energy infrastructure are doing a service to our country, and they need to benefit from that. It could be argued that we will all benefit in the long term as energy prices come down and we have more energy security, but there are many ways that communities can directly benefit, including through community funds, direct payments and community ownership. We are exploring all the options, and we will have more to say about that soon. In the meantime, Great British Energy will support community energy schemes, helping communities to unlock opportunities through the local power plan, which will support local authorities, community energy groups and others to deliver small and medium-scale renewable energy projects. It could develop up to 8 GW of clean power by 2030.

I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds for securing the debate, and other hon. Members for their very thoughtful interventions. The Government remain committed to balancing the urgent need for renewable electricity with considerations of land use, food production and community benefit. We want to take people with us on this journey, which will see us going into the future with a mix of renewable energy that delivers the lower prices that we all want to see.

Question put and agreed to.

11:28

Sitting suspended.

Agricultural Property Relief

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer in the Chair]

[Relevant document: e-petition 700138, Don’t change inheritance tax relief for working farms.]

14:30

[Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of changes to Agricultural Property Relief.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interest as a tenant dairy farmer. In Wales, 80% of our land is given over to farming, and our food foundation sector—including businesses that produce, process, manufacture and wholesale food and drink goods—is a vital part of our economy, hitting a turnover of £9.3 billion in 2023. In fact, Cabinet Ministers in the Labour Welsh Government have lauded Wales as a “food nation”, but the UK Government’s decision in the autumn Budget to change the agricultural property relief and business property relief will have a real effect on food, sustainable food production and food security in Wales.

Business property relief and agricultural property relief were introduced in the 1970s and the 1980s respectively to ensure that a farm or family business could continue trading after the owner’s death, protecting it from being sold and broken up. However, on 30 October 2024, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the Labour UK Government intend to change APR and BPR conditions from 6 April 2026. From that date, 100% relief from inheritance tax will be restricted to the first £1 million of combined agricultural and business property, and 50% thereafter. The proposals equate to landowners paying inheritance tax at a rate of 20% of estate value, with the threshold from which they pay being dependent on individual circumstances. That tax is payable in instalments over 10 years without interest.

Combining APR and BPR under those changes means that the asset value of the tools and the machinery necessary to operate a farming business are affected, as well as the agricultural land and property, alongside any diversification activities that the UK Government have told farmers to explore to increase their income. The UK Government contend that those changes will affect around 500 estates a year, and that small family farms will not be affected, but organisations within the agricultural sector say otherwise.

The National Farmers Union calculated that 75% of commercial family farms will fall above the £1 million threshold across the UK. The Farmers’ Union of Wales, using other figures, estimated that essentially all farms that produce nearly 90% of agricultural output in Wales could be liable under the changes. In fact, Eirian Humphreys of LHP Accountants, a large accountancy firm across south and west Wales, told me that of the 51 farming clients who have inquired about those changes so far, 46—around 90%—will have to pay inheritance tax if they die after 6 April 2026.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter before the House again. On the subject of the 500 estates, can we all agree that that only relates to the number of estates that claim under APR? It does not take account of the effect of APR and BPR together. In fact, BPR valuations are taken at book value, not at market value, so the number of estates that are liable must inevitably be massively greater than 500.

[Ann Davies]

Absolutely. We all know that is the case.

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister is shaking his head. I wonder whether the hon. Lady would join me in inviting him to intervene to explain why that fact is wrong.

[Ann Davies]

I do not know whether the Minister would like to do so now or at the end. It is up to him.

[Torsten Bell]

I will at some length explain why the remarks that the right hon. Gentleman just made—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. If Members wish to make an intervention, they should stand to do so. It is up to the person who is speaking whether to accept an intervention.

I was going to say this at the end of Ann Davies’s speech, but I will say it now. This debate is oversubscribed, so I will put a time limit on speeches. Members should make short interventions, because interventions will mean less time for those people who have put in to speak.

[Ann Davies]

Of the clients that Eirian mentioned, five of them will not come under the tax liability because they have very small farms with off-farm income, they have transferred their farms following ill health, or they have significant debt that offsets the value of their farms.

It is clear that the assessments of the impact of the changes on working farms across the UK, on the wider economy and on the wider food supply chain are inadequate. The data that we have is deficient; it includes smallholdings and non-working farms. Data based on the basic payment scheme or on agricultural output would provide a fairer representation of the situation for genuine farmers.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is speaking remarkably well about the challenges that this Government policy will create for farmers in Wales, in Scotland and across the UK. Research by Scottish Land and Estates shows that the average UK farm size is 217 acres and the average agricultural land value in Great Britain is £8,200 per acre, which means that the average working farm in the UK is worth about £1.8 million. Does that not show the flaw in the Government’s argument? This policy is not attacking the richest landowners; it is attacking working farms the length and breadth of the UK.

[Ann Davies]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I totally agree. Indeed, I will give further details about that issue later in my speech.

It is also clear that industry experts were not consulted on the changes prior to the announcement, even though consultation could have led to a fairer and more appropriate solution that is not detrimental to family farms or the wider industry.

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very passionate speech on an extremely important topic. She will know that my constituency of Chester South and Eddisbury borders Wales, and that there are many family farmers in north Wales who are deeply concerned about the consequences of this policy. Does she agree that it will impact not only farmers but the wider agricultural-industrial community, including businesses in my constituency that work alongside Welsh farmers in north Wales, such as Meadow Foods in Chester?

[Ann Davies]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, and perhaps I should mention that Meadow Foods is the company that takes the milk from our farm—so we are that close to one another. I will say more about that issue as I move through my speech.

The lack of any data on the particular effects of the changes in Wales is a genuine problem. The available data, especially the data used by the Treasury, is a combination of Wales data and England data, or is UK-level data; it is not Welsh data. That is why organisations in Wales have to make their own calculations about the impact in Wales. The Country Land and Business Association calculated that an average 250-acre dairy farm in Wales could be hit by a £119,000 inheritance tax charge, while the average 250-acre livestock farm would expect an £85,000 charge. However, those figures do not include the asset value of diversified enterprise, meaning, of course, that they could be higher still.

It is crucial that farmers, policymakers and other stakeholders in Wales have accurate data to understand the real impacts of the changes within the specific context of Wales. The FUW called for the Wales-specific impact assessment to be modelled with working farms only, as the Welsh Government—the Welsh Labour Government—did during their 2023 sustainable farming scheme analysis. Today, I reiterate the call for the Government to implement that assessment, as my Plaid Cymru colleagues and I have continuously called for since October. The arguments have not changed.

There is evidence that the changes will not make even an iota of difference to the Treasury. In fact, modelling from the Confederation of British Industry Economics found that the changes to BPR will actually cost the Exchequer £1.25 billion between 2026-27 and 2029-30. It is unclear how they work towards Labour’s mission of growth, as industry organisations have come across numerous cases of farms and businesses delaying investments, putting orders on hold and preparing to reduce staffing. Let us not forget that each £1 a farmer spends generates another £9 in that community. What other rural industry does that?

Undermining local farmers and agricultural producers risks missing out on crucial opportunities to shorten our supply chains and to improve our food resilience. We currently produce 60% of the food that we need here in the UK and, when our food imports already outnumber exports by £33.2 billion, causing a reduction in the food that we produce will only increase our vulnerability to factors outside our control—the damaging consequences of which we have already felt in the energy market.

There is also a consensus that the changes do not address the initial concerns about non-farmers investing in land to avoid inheritance tax. For those with new money from capital gains made in the non-agricultural economy, there will continue to be a huge incentive to buy agricultural land, given that the value of that land above the announced threshold will face inheritance tax charges at half the rate of other assets.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that, if the Treasury had considered increasing the threshold and raising the overall rate for very wealthy landowners to 40%, it might have achieved the outcome it was looking for? I put on record that I would not have gone down the route that it has anyway.

[Ann Davies]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I am coming on to solutions in a minute; I hope that the Minister will listen to my proposed options.

Extending the existing scope of APR to land managed under environmental agreements with or on behalf of, for example, the Government or public bodies also suggests that foundations and large companies could buy up land sold to pay inheritance tax, without being subject to it in the same way. We have a train of people in west Wales who are already buying land for planting trees, carbon offsetting and solar and wind farms.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I find the notion of people buying and selling land purely for fiscal purposes abhorrent. I come from a farming family. My father was broke. He had to sell most of the land. There is not a day that goes by in which I do not look at the fields and regret that my family parted with it. The point I am making is that there is an emotional attachment between the farming family and the land. That is quite different from buying or selling a house, shares or a holiday home in Spain—it is quite different.

[Ann Davies]

As someone who has lived and worked the land all my life, I totally agree with the hon. Member. It is something that is within our soul; it is not just a trading issue.

[Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)]

I commend the hon. Lady on her excellent speech. Given that we are asking farmers, who are already under so much emotional and financial pressure, to be even more active participants in helping us to mitigate climate change and restore nature, does she agree that it is not the time to add to their stress and risk losing their deep knowledge of their land, which has been passed from generation to generation?

[Ann Davies]

I totally agree. Nobody understands those fields better than the farmer who has worked that land. They know where those wet corners are and they know where they should not tread during certain times. The sustainable farming scheme—the SFS—is coming out in Wales next year, and it is about nature restoration, so I absolutely agree.

Estate agents in west Wales are already seeing increased investor interest in purchasing farms following the autumn Budget. Selling land to pay an inheritance tax bill will inevitably hit tenant farmers because the £1 million threshold will hit asset-rich estates. Around 30% of land in Wales is farmed under some sort of tenancy agreement and, although some is local authority-owned, much is owned by private landlords. The Tenant Farmers Association anticipates that more insecure agricultural tenancies will be terminated to allow land to be sold to avoid taxes on death. Other landlords are reducing the lengths of term offered to tenants, who were expecting longer leases, so that farms are more readily sellable in case of tax change.

[Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)]

Tenant farmers on Ynys Môn are expected to be impacted by the change to APR because landowners there will have no option but to sell their farms to cover the additional cost. The landowners have a good relationship with their tenants but they have no choice but to sell, leaving generational farmers to lose their homes, businesses and future, with long-lasting effects on the rural community. Does my hon. Friend agree that the realities of agriculture in Wales, including for tenant farmers, must be fully considered by the UK Government in a Wales-specific impact assessment?

[Ann Davies]

Diolch yn fawr. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I should add that the wider economy will lose another vital source of food production. If that land is taken, it will never go back into food production.

My hon. Friend mentioned the effect on Wales, and there is a knock-on effect on the Welsh language: 43% of those involved in agriculture in Wales speak Welsh. Keeping our farming communities alive is key to moving towards the Welsh Labour Government’s target of achieving 1 million Welsh speakers in 2050. There is real worry—farming constituents have told me, with an eye on what it means for their own children, that they are concerned about the impact of the changes on future food production by Welsh-speaking families in areas of Wales already facing depopulation.

The families behind farming businesses are important to this debate. They are not just figures; they are people—people such as Richard Twose of Maenhir, who runs a 700-acre farm of 400 Holstein dairy cows and 300 pedigree Lleyn ewes with his parents, brother and children. APR and BPR changes have blown apart the family’s succession plans. They may now be forced to transfer the parents’ share in the farm and hope that they live for another seven years, or else the family will face a big tax burden on top of their business debt. Just yesterday I heard that, to add to the family’s worries and concerns, Richard’s father had passed away suddenly over Christmas.

The APR and BPR changes do not appear proportionate, in many ways. Inflation has already eroded the nil rate tax band of £325,000, which has been frozen since 2009 and is set to remain frozen until 2030. When APR and BPR were introduced, the nil rate band covered 56 acres of farmland; today, it covers 29 acres.

How the changes apply is not fair because the particularities—who someone shares the farm with, which tools or machinery they own or have hired, how much business debt they have—have a direct impact on their inheritance tax bill. Although the Government have said that married couples and their descendants can benefit from up to £3 million in tax relief, in reality tax experts are quoting figures that vary between £2 million and £4 million, based on different scenarios. We must remember that the Chancellor stated in October that the starting point for calculations is £1 million.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

Diolch yn fawr—thank you—to the hon. Member for giving way. Farmers in my constituency say to me that their problem is the threshold. The on-paper values of their farms—often several million pounds, even if the farmer makes no actual surplus income from the farm—would take them well into being caught by this policy. But the current situation is not working either, because non-farmers bought up more than half the farms and estates sold on the open market in England in 2023.

One local farmer told me that a 350-acre farm in Suffolk was bought by a merchant banker from London who had not even seen the farm and was clearly not intent on farming. Does the hon. Member agree that although we need the Government to increase the threshold, those arguing for the status quo are not doing farmers justice either?

[Ann Davies]

Absolutely. I am coming to my solutions, so I hope the Treasury will listen. I have three solutions that I think would work, because there are alternatives to this policy. The first is that abolishing capital business asset rollover relief could have provided a more targeted measure to tackle wealthy individuals buying agricultural land to avoid tax. That is the big one.

Secondly, taxing assets at the point of selling, rather than at the point of passing to another generation, would be a fairer measure to keep family farms. Thirdly, modifying existing proposals could double the zero-rate band and significantly increase the threshold, while allowing a shorter period than seven years for potentially exempt transfers. I have an additional comment on that. Do any of us have the right to live for seven years? That, my friends, is really not within our gift. Those are a few solutions from expert organisations in the sector, which could have proposed their solutions before the Government made their decision. That underlines again the importance of proper consultation with stakeholders.

To sum up, the APR and BPR changes have come at an already difficult time for farmers, with high costs of production, adverse weather and marketplace volatility taking their toll. Working farms that have been at the heart of Welsh communities for generations will suffer. As a constituent told me,

“Every farmer deserves the right to security of the farm they own or rent.”

Farms are not businesses but family legacies, vital for our rural economy and key to preserving our Welsh-speaking culture. Plaid Cymru supports closing loopholes that allow billionaire landowners to avoid paying their fair share, but this one-size-fits-all approach ignores the unique challenges of Welsh farming. That is why it is so important that the UK Government implement a Wales-specific impact assessment that reflects the realities of agriculture in Wales.

A petition calling for the UK Government not to change inheritance tax relief for working farms has reached more than 146,000 signatories, and is being debated here on 10 February—put that in the diary, folks! It is clear that the public agree that it is time for the Government to listen to farmers, conduct a proper analysis and rethink this damaging policy before it is too late.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. The debate is well subscribed, so I am going to start with a four-minute limit. If there are a lot of interventions, that time will have to be reduced.

14:53

[Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) on securing this important debate about a topic of major concern for many of my constituents.

Farming is at the heart of Wales’s social fabric, playing a vital role in our economy, food security and stewardship of the beautiful Welsh countryside. On Saturday, I met representatives of the FUW in Llansilin and NFU Cymru at a farm in Llanerfyl to discuss the ongoing challenges that farmers face. Farming is currently the least profitable sector of our economy, and changes to APR are having a significant impact on family-run farms.

A lifelong farmer in my constituency raised her children on her 220-acre farm. Although considered small, the farm is valued at more than £1 million. Her 48-year-old son, who has farmed alongside her since the age of 18, had hoped to take over the farm. His young daughters now share his passion. Sadly, they now face the prospect of losing the farm they have worked so hard for.

Let me be clear. I support progressive taxation to ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share towards the upkeep of our society. In the 21st century, we see individual plutocrats and super-wealthy multinationals buying agricultural land to avoid paying inheritance tax, with no intention of using it for farming. That reduces our farmed land—something we can ill afford, given our fast-growing population in an unstable world.

The proposed changes to APR for farmers come on the back of this and more, and feel like the straw that broke the camel’s back, or as we would say in Wales: “Yr hoelen olaf yn yr arch.—[Translation: The final nail in the coffin.]”—if the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin can forgive my north-east Wales accent. The changes risk having a deeply detrimental effect on working family farms. What is at stake here? Food security. I have repeatedly spoken in the Chamber about my heartbreaking experiences with hungry children and food banks. In recent years, we have seen something that many never thought they would witness: food scarcity, empty shelves in the supermarkets and astronomical food price inflation. It cannot be overstated how that period of food inflation has affected the poorest in our country.

I will not say more about the proposed APR policy as a whole. Prior to my election in July, I attended 10 hustings —we do like our hustings in mid-Wales; my thoughts on this topic are well-known and on the record. However, I will speak about mitigations. First, I respectfully request that the Minister considers raising the threshold. If this policy is to target those who buy farmland solely to dodge inheritance tax, then let us make it so: raise the threshold and actually increase the rate for people like that, so that no family farm is affected.

Secondly, I implore the Minister to look at an exemption for farmers who—I risk sounding macabre, but I want to make myself clear—are too late in life to plan for this proposed change. I hope the Minister and you, Mr Stringer, can forgive my emotion. When you sit with an elderly farmer and his wife, both fighting back the tears, and they say, “If only I could die now, if only there was some kind of pill I could take now, so that my children don’t have to worry about this,” that has a profound effect. Diolch.

14:56

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) for securing this important debate. I agree with her and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) about emotional attachment; I urge hon. Members to watch “The Field” with Richard Harris—his Oscar-winning performance.

I want to return to the point that I have made in previous debates and which has already been made by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr. The key issue is that food security is national security; we as MPs have a duty to ensure that and to deliver jobs for communities across the country and low prices for consumers. Yet the Government behave as if they think food appears magically on the shelves at supermarkets.

My constituency of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East holds some of the best agricultural farmland in the country, and it will be disproportionately impacted by this change. Three quarters of the land in my constituency is used for agriculture, and the people who work that land are incredibly worried. Personally, I would have sympathy with a policy that targeted wealthy individuals who purchase agricultural land as a means of avoiding inheritance tax. However, that will not be the sole consequence of this legislation—that is the crucial point.

After the Chancellor delivered her Budget speech last year, the NFU and the National Farmers Union Scotland immediately cast doubt on the revenue that the policy would actually raise; they were ignored and dismissed. Now, even the Office for Budget Responsibility—Labour appear quick to mention it, but then ignore when it suits—has cast doubt on the revenue that the policy would raise. It states that the Treasury figure of £500 million is now highly uncertain. The justification for the policy is falling apart.

Since we last met on this issue, almost every major supermarket chain in the UK has publicly backed farmers, urging the Government to halt their plans and carry out a consultation. Ashwin Prasad, Tesco’s chief commercial officer, said there must be a pause in the Government’s implementation of the Budget measures, while a full consultation is carried out.

Farmers recognise Labour’s APR change as a bad decision; now the UK’s leading supermarkets have confirmed it. We must not forget that Labour brought in this change after explicitly ruling it out. Long-term clarity is needed when it comes to planning the future of family farms and the UK Government have failed farmers on that point. Listening to the NFUS and the NFU on this issue would have saved a lot of hurt for farmers, rural communities and shoppers across the country.

I have heard time and again from the Government that this policy was necessary to tackle the difficult financial situation that they inherited from the previous Government. I do not see how a bad inheritance justifies an objectively bad policy for consumers and farmers. If the necessity was so, why did the Chancellor rush to Davos to offer tax reliefs to non-doms, why is she not tackling widespread tax evasion by prominent individuals, as was reported recently by the BBC, and why is she not considering a wealth tax?

It seems ironic that the Labour Government complain about their dire inheritance while ignoring the dire inheritance that they are inflicting on family farms throughout the UK. It is not too late for the UK Government to reassess this damaging policy and make the necessary changes to protect farmers across these islands and in my constituency. It is a bad policy, Minister, and it is time to rethink it.

15:00

[Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) on securing such a valuable debate.

Being a farmer is not job; it is a career. In fact, it is not a career; it is a way of life. As one of the few active farming MPs, I am more qualified than most to comment. We were told before the election that Labour had no intention of changing APR, and farmers would have voted for Labour specifically on that pledge from the Environment Secretary. They certainly would not now. We should call it what it is: an outright betrayal.

Where do people think our food comes from? It does not grow on shelves in Waitrose; it is grown by British farmers on British farms. I urge all MPs to speak to their farming constituents. They will all say exactly the same: the backbone of British farming is being intentionally broken. If Labour continues down this path, thousands of grieving British farming families will lose their farms forever. Is that really what the Government want? The answer seems to be yes.

This assault on British family farms will undermine our food security, making our already uncertain place in an increasingly dangerous world even more precarious. Supporting British farmers today means safeguarding our domestic food supply for tomorrow. That should be the aim of any responsible Government. A rethink of this policy is urgently required.

15:02

[Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)]

It is starting to feel a bit like groundhog day, because the Government are clearly not listening to the entire agricultural economy, community or experts. Let us go back to the beginning and have a brief history lesson. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) just mentioned that the Government said prior to the election that they had no intention of changing APR. At the Budget, the Chancellor told us that this was a measure to prevent very wealthy individuals from buying up agricultural land to avoid inheritance tax. That was proven by analysis of the policy to be untrue, so there was a pivot and we were told that the measure was about raising revenue for public services in rural areas. Then the OBR said, “Well, actually, it’s not going to raise the revenue it says it’s going to raise,” so the whole thing has unravelled week after week.

We have heard from other hon. Members today about the issue of the APR analysis not taking into account the BPR effect, and what that does for tenant farmers and farmers who have used BPR as one vehicle to wrap everything into in the event of a death. We have farmers, agricultural organisations, supermarkets, tax experts—even The Observer this weekend—coming out against the policy. It is truly remarkable that the Government have managed to unite all those people against one single measure.

Today, quite significantly, we had analysis from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. That is important, because the AHDB is a non-departmental Government body, not a lobbying organisation. Its analysis, using data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the farm business survey and the Scottish Government, says that over 75% of farms will be affected by this measure—three times the amount that the flawed Treasury modelling said.

Most of those farms simply cannot afford a large inheritance tax bill because, as we all know, they do not have the income to pay it. The result will be the sale of land upon death, most likely to the wealthy individuals or businesses that this very policy was allegedly meant to deter. In turn, that will take land out of production, risking both our food security and local agricultural economies. My hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) made a really important point about the impact on construction firms, feed merchants, hauliers, plumbers, electricians—all those who rely on a healthy farming sector.

The Government have ploughed on, with their head in the sand, but at what cost? There is a political cost —the decimation of Labour’s reputation in the countryside —but, more importantly, there is a human cost. This measure has placed enormous stress on family farms and, unforgivably, we have heard stories of suicide.

If the Chancellor can look again at non-doms, she can look again at this policy. If the Treasury is seeking to deter the wealthy from buying agricultural land, let us look at this again. If it is seeking to raise revenue, let us look at this again. The farmers are not going to back down, and we are not going to back down, so let us do the right thing, get round the table and find a better way forward.

15:05

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I commend the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) for bringing forward this debate. She is a real advocate for farmers, and her constituents will have noted that.

As has been said, farming is not just a job, but a way of life. It is a generational commitment. In rural Northern Ireland, including in my constituency of Upper Bann, despite the recent inclement weather, rising production costs and the very real concerns of avian flu, bluetongue and the affliction of tuberculosis, our farmers continue to toil away. As we stand here today, they are milking cows and feeding livestock. They are working the land and ultimately feeding the nation. Farmers take great pride in their work, with zero days off and low incomes, and they bear the immense responsibility of being the custodians of our countryside and the lifeblood of our rural communities. Schools, businesses and essential services depend on them.

[Jamie Stone]

I sincerely hope that I am wrong in what I am about to suggest, but if the value of land were to drop as a result of these measures, and a farm had borrowed heavily and owed the bank a lot, it could be the case that the bank would foreclose and force the sale of the farm.

[Carla Lockhart]

The hon. Member is not wrong—he is rarely wrong. That the policy could lead to the splitting up of family farms is a concern for many farming families across Northern Ireland and this United Kingdom.

Agriculture has long been and continues to be the backbone of the UK economy. The agrifood sector contributes significantly to our GDP and employs hundreds of thousands of people across the country, yet, despite their crucial contribution, farmers face ever-increasing pressures that are not of their making.

Farming is deeply personal for me: I was raised on a farm, I am the daughter of a farmer, I am the wife of a farmer and, as I have said in this place before, I am the proud mum of a little boy who aspires to be a family farmer. He also dreams of being a professional footballer, but we will talk about that another day. So when I speak of farming, it really cuts deep, and it is from my heart that I bring the Government the simple but urgent message that they continue down this path at their peril. The proposed tax changes are a heavy blow to those who are already struggling, and they will be a wrecking ball to our rural communities and rural way of life across this United Kingdom. They will undermine our food security, drive up prices and undermine the world-class environmental standards that British farmers adhere to day and daily.

The changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief fly in the face of the manifesto commitments of this Government. Prior to the general election, the Prime Minister told farmers what they wanted to hear. It feels very much like “you’ve threw them under the bus,” as we would say in Northern Ireland, for little monetary return for the Government coffers. He said:

“Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back…You deserve better than that.”

Those words came from the Prime Minister’s mouth, and they ring very hollow in our rural community.

The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland has done a deep dive into the figures, which clearly outline the significant and disproportionate impact that the changes will have on Northern Ireland’s agricultural sector. DAERA’s analysis has shown that the vast majority of farms will be affected. In fact, under the current land valuation of £21,000 per acre in Northern Ireland, approximately 40% to 45% of cattle and sheep farms will be impacted, and an astounding 87% of dairy farms will be caught by the tax. It is not a marginal impact; it will affect almost half of farms in Northern Ireland, which together account for 80% of the total agricultural land, 70% of beef cattle, 90% of dairy cows and 80% of all cattle. The proposed changes will disrupt the very heart of our agricultural output. Sadly, that situation is replicated across the whole of the UK.

Despite all the evidence and concerns, the UK Government continue to state that only 500 farmers will be impacted by the changes. The official figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility remain highly uncertain. In fact, the OBR itself acknowledged that the estimates are among the most uncertain in the entire Budget package. According to independent analysis, the true number of affected farmers is likely to be five times greater than the Government’s estimate. I have made this point repeatedly in this place: no farmers, no food.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Jim Shannon.

15:11

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

On a point of clarification, Mr Stringer, I understand that the Front-Bench speeches will begin at 3.28 pm. Does that mean that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) and myself can divide the 17 minutes until then between ourselves?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

On the time limit that I have set, if people took the four minutes, we would finish the Back-Bench speeches at 3.19 pm. One of the problems is that some people have put in to speak but are not standing. That made the calculation difficult, because I assumed that people who had put in to speak would be bobbing, and they have not. At the moment, I will go with the four minutes that we have agreed.

[Jim Shannon]

Thank you for that clarification, Mr Stringer. I did not intend to put you under any pressure. I wish you well and thank you for your chairship.

I thank the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) —I hope my pronunciation is right, with my Ulster Scots accent—for securing this important debate on a matter of grave concern for many constituents and communities across the United Kingdom, and for those that I proudly represent as the Member of Parliament for Strangford. I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, a farmer and a landowner. All my neighbours—every one of them—are concerned about this issue, and they have expressed that to me very clearly.

Farmers are the backbone of our rural economy. Their work provides not only the food that graces our tables but the stewardship of our natural landscapes, which are an integral part of our cultural and environmental heritage. Yet the changes to APR threaten to destabilise that foundation. I have spoken to farmers in my constituency and beyond, and their message is clear: the changes will place a substantial financial burden on farming families, forcing many to sell land to cover tax liabilities.

In response to a survey by the Country Land and Business Association, 86% of farmers indicated that they would need to sell all or part of their land if APR were removed. I understand that approximately 70% of farms in Northern Ireland—that comes from the Ulster Farmers’ Union legal officer—will be affected, because the farms are smaller.

It is really important that we get this right. Farmers have faced unrelenting challenges in recent years, including soaring energy and fertiliser costs, unpredictable weather patterns and inflationary pressures. The past decade has been marked by uncertainty. The loss of APR would mean that future generations could face unsurmountable inheritance tax. For smaller farms, especially, that could spell the end of their viability. The reality is that the changes will sweep up in their net many genuine, hard-working family farms. It is not just a financial issue; it is a matter of fairness, community sustainability and food security.

The Minister is an honourable person, but let us be honest and reasonable: what is right and what is wrong? Justice is what we are looking for here, and that must be addressed. When global supply chains are increasingly fragile, it is unwise to undermine domestic food production. Every acre lost to inheritance tax obligations reduces our ability to feed our population sustainably and affordably.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

Clearly, many Members on both sides of the Chamber are incredibly concerned by the Government’s proposals to cut agricultural property relief and business property relief. Farmers from my constituency came to see me and they are incredibly worried. In an area with high land values but relatively small farms, they think that they will lose their farms. Does the hon. Member agree that, as well as having a global impact, losing those farms will be incredibly detrimental to the rural economy—to veterinary practices, agricultural merchants and other businesses attached to farming?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. With those wise words, she has hit the nail on the head. When the Minister looks round this Chamber, he will see that everybody—those who have spoken and those who are here—is united against the change to APR. We are not going to put the Minister under pressure unduly, but if it were me, I would think twice about getting into a fight where it was 27 to one.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Member will be aware that my wife’s family come from Northern Ireland. My understanding is that the price of land there is quite a lot higher per acre than in Scotland or England. Does that not mean that what we are talking about today has a disproportionate effect on the Province of Northern Ireland?

[Jim Shannon]

It certainly does. For the Minister, we will lay on the line what we are after. The £1 million threshold is wrong, because it does not adequately reflect the rateable value of a farm. If the threshold was £5 million, that would save the small farms. The hon. Member for Caerfyrddin, who introduced the debate, talked about solutions. I have a solution for the Labour party, and I do not care if the Labour party claims it—that does not matter to me. What matters to me is that the threshold should rise from £1 million to £5 million. If it does, family farms will be saved, and if they are saved, we have a chance of moving forward.

I am trying to put that forward to the Minister as a positive solution. With the Ulster Farmers Union representatives William Irvine and Alex Kinnear, I had a meeting with the Minister away back before Christmas. We put that solution to him, and he said that he would take it to the Chancellor, because ultimately it will be her decision. It is a really clear way forward.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) is right in what he says about Northern Ireland. Land values are more expensive in Northern Ireland than anywhere else, which is why the 70% figure is greater for Northern Ireland than anywhere else. We want to have the same mechanism for everybody across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but there are other ideas about mechanisms such as extended payment windows or graduated tax liabilities to alleviate the financial strain on small farms.

I urge the Minister to provide clarity and reassurance to farmers, who are deeply concerned about the future. Again, I say this to him: if we want to do something positive following this debate—as I think we can and must—the issue of the threshold is the way forward. When people add up the value of the land, the value of the machinery and the value of the stock, they are well over the £1 million threshold, but what if he made the threshold £5 million? I have not grasped that figure out of the air; the Ulster Farmers Union and the National Farmers Union put it forward as a figure that could address the issue.

I am not going to put a lot of pressure on the Minister today—well, actually, I am. We are all putting pressure on him, because we see a way forward—genuinely, constructively and positively. I beseech him to take that message from the debate today to increase the threshold and save family farms.

This is an issue across Northern Ireland, including in the constituencies that my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and I represent. All my neighbours are worried sick about what the future holds, as are those tenant farmers in Wales and Scotland—across this great United Kingdom. We need the threshold to be raised. If the Minister does that, we will be on his side.

15:19

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. First and foremost, I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) on securing this vital debate. Right hon. and hon. Members will perhaps be sick of hearing me talk on this topic, but I feel compelled to provide a voice for my farmers. My constituency of Tiverton and Minehead has a similar make-up to the hon. Lady’s. It is overwhelmingly rural agricultural land and home to many farming communities. There are some 1,600 holdings according to the CLA and 432 of those farms will be hit by the Government’s APR changes.

We Liberal Democrats applaud our farmers. As a former director of the National Farmers Union, I feel well placed to highlight the damaging consequences that will inevitably be visited upon them as a result of the changes to agricultural property relief. The Government’s claim that 27% of all farms will be affected is, if I am being generous, misinformed. According to in-depth analysis conducted by the National Farmers Union in collaboration with the OBR and Treasury experts, 75% of the nation’s working farms fall above the £1 million threshold and will be struck by the punitive changes. The changes are said to be caveated by different assumptions on rate relief.

There are misapplied exceptions. The first one is that the average family farm would not top the threshold of £3 million in value, which is just not the case. Great Ash farm in my constituency is a typical good-sized family farm consisting of 256 acres and is on the market for £3.5 million. In an inheritance tax valuation, the farm’s livestock and machinery would be added to the value, bringing the total to around £3.68 million. Even when the acreage is not as large, the value of agricultural land alone often pushes farmers close to, if not over, the £3 million threshold and can certainly shatter the individual threshold of £1 million. If we add to the value of the land the livestock, deadstock, properties, machinery and business, the owners of the farm are looking at a hefty valuation—not one that they can capitalise on to keep the farm, but one that will ensure they are caught in the claws of this onerous death duty.

The second misapplied exception is because farm ownership is not in all cases split equally between a husband and wife, and it does not always pass to a direct descendant. Existing capital gains tax rules have discouraged many older farmers from transferring their farms to their children owing to the potential tax burden, which means that ownership is staggered across many generations in some cases. Often, when there are not ownership models that meet the co-owning married couple status that the Chancellor uses for the modelling of those exceptions, it means that the various personal and dependent inheritance tax exemptions that go into the flawed Treasury equation on this policy cannot be used on many occasions.

The third misapplied exception, the residence nil rate band, is unlikely to be applicable. It is reduced by £1 for every £2 when the estate exceeds £2 million. Therefore, if a farm business exceeds £2.65 million, the residence nil rate tax band is no longer valid. That is yet another misapplied Treasury exemption, which will not have a realistic effect on family farms’ ability to keep the taxman from taking everything they have. In conclusion, I will make no apology for standing up for my rural communities—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. Your four minutes are up. I call Alistair Carmichael.

15:23

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I had put in to speak, but when I saw the attendance in the Chamber, I thought I would exercise a self-denying ordinance. That seems to have been counterproductive, so I will take a couple of minutes to drill down into some of the underlying assumptions in relation to this issue.

Let us bear in mind that there are three ways in which agricultural land can be passed on in succession. It can be relieved under agricultural property relief, under business property relief, or under a combination of the two. Hitherto, that has offered executry practitioners and others a range of different options. Frankly, as long as the land qualified as agricultural farming land, it did not really matter which route was taken.

In fact, any value was pretty academic because there was 100% relief in any event. I suspect that is why the HMRC guidance in relation to business property relief says that for a relief claimed under BPR, the book value, if I can use that shorthand, should be used. There is then no need to have the full market value. The letter that the Chancellor sent to the Treasury Committee on 15 November last year made no reference to those estates that passed on land under BPR only. To my mind, it is almost certainly the case that a large number of other farms will be caught by the measure that have not been included in Treasury calculations.

That view is reinforced today by the publication of the report by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, which, as the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst) said, is a non-departmental public body of DEFRA. The body is levy funded, but the press release says that it is not for it to say whether inheritance tax should be exigible in these circumstances—it just wishes to inform the debate with its analysis. Its analysis is that 42,204 farms out of 54,938 of 50 hectares or more will be affected.

That must surely give the Treasury some cause for concern, and a basis on which it could pause the change. We still have a long time to go; it will not be in the Finance Bill until October or November of this year. Where an element of doubt exists, it would surely be sensible for everyone concerned if the Treasury were to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the farming unions and others.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an extremely fair assessment. Does he acknowledge that the Treasury is full of capable civil servants and Ministers who have a number of other options available to them? No doubt the argument will be that there is a black hole to fill, but even if one does accept that, there are still better options overall for the agricultural and rural communities that serve us across this country.

[Mr Carmichael]

There are other options. On another day, with more time available, we might be able to look at what the tax take will be for the changes. The Secretary of State, when he gave evidence to the Select Committee, said that they were not going to be a problem because most people will avoid them. In fact, there will be opportunities for that to be the case.

The underlying concern here, which the Minister has the opportunity to address, is whether the Government still adhere to the belief that there is a public policy interest in ensuring the transition of family farms down the generations. If that was the original basis on which the reliefs were introduced, and if it remains the policy objective to this day, the figures need to be looked at more carefully. The thresholds could be increased or there could be a 10-year clawback—whatever the solution may be; the industry is full of ideas. There are any number of people who will come forward with suggestions for the things that at least some people in Government say they sought to achieve by making the change.

If—the Prime Minister was not very clear about this; well, he was clear that he was not bothered—the object was to avoid the super-rich using land to shelter their wealth, there are better ways of doing that. The Minister will get full co-operation from the farming unions and communities, but in order to have that, there has to be a dialogue. At the moment we are getting nothing from the Treasury. If he takes no other message back to the Treasury today, he should take this: the Chancellor must meet the farming unions.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

We are back on schedule, so there are 10 minutes each for the Front-Bench spokespeople.

15:28

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) for securing this important debate, and I applaud the cross-party work she is doing to ensure that Welsh farmers have a strong voice in this place. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), who pointed out the holes in the proposed policy change. I welcome the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), whose voice is so valued by the agricultural community across these isles. He pointed out that there is still time for the Government to engage properly with the sector, and that it is in the public interest to preserve these farms.

Last weekend, a group of farmers came to Llandrindod Wells to show me their accounts. What they wanted to show me was not how much they were making, but how little. Their figures were corroborated by statistics released this month by the Welsh Government, which show that farming incomes have fallen by a staggering 34% across Wales in the last year. The average income now sits at just £22,000, which is perhaps not surprising considering what farmers have had to cope with recently: rising energy costs, runaway fertiliser inflation, supermarkets forcing unfair prices on producers, the transition away from the EU customs union, disastrous Conservative trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, and extra regulations from the Welsh Government. Those are just a few of the issues they are coping with, and we can now add to that the rise in national insurance and the changes to APR and BPR announced in the autumn Budget. Family farms are on the brink.

The people working on our farms in Wales deserve a decent living. Farming is already a tough business, but those figures and challenges highlight how unsustainable the situation is for many families. The Government’s proposed changes to agricultural property relief make things worse by forcing farmers either to sell parts of their land or to make repayments that will wipe out any annual profit. The Government are relying on outdated APR claim figures from 2021-22 and including non-commercial holdings in their calculations, which downplays the policy’s impact. According to NFU Cymru, the number of farms in Wales that will be affected is closer to 75% than the 27% claimed by the Government. If the Government are so confident in their numbers, why will not they release a full impact assessment that includes national breakdowns for Wales and Scotland?

When speaking to people in the sector, it is clear that they know what the impact will be: a further contraction in the rural economy. More young people will be forced to leave farming, placing our food security at risk, driving up food prices and damaging the wider rural economy. The process of rural depopulation will continue, making it harder for local councils to provide services. In Wales, the policy could have a calamitous impact on the Welsh language.

Recently, I visited Llanelwedd primary school, and a nine-year-old pupil asked me about the rising cost of fertiliser. I asked him whether he was going to farm when he grew up, and he looked me in the eye and said, “I am a farmer already.” Yet, under these new policies, this young man may inherit a smaller farm with little profit and fewer opportunities.

Farming is not a typical business, but it is an essential one. In Wales, we have already seen the decline of many industries as a result of political decisions, and I fear that the proposed changes to APR could have the same devastating effect on farming. Who will farm the Welsh countryside? Will it be Welsh farming families who have worked the land for generations, or will it be the super-rich? It is reported that the Government plan to soften the blow for non-doms, but they seem unwilling to listen to the farmers who are the backbone of our rural economy. Our farmers are patriots and servants of the land. Who will feed us when they are gone?

Surely, Ministers must now look again at this policy. It is not just Opposition parties and farming unions that are criticising it, but the Office for Budget Responsibility, supermarkets and even, as of this weekend, the Labour First Minister of Wales. Rural Labour MPs need to stand with them and to pressure the Government to reconsider, and I applaud the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) for doing exactly that in this debate.

There are alternatives. Many in my constituency are already asking why Labour is targeting family farms, small businesses and charities for tax rises, while letting big banks, oil companies and tech giants off the hook. That is where the full troughs lie.

APR is not a loophole. As has been mentioned, it was purposefully introduced to protect family farms and safeguard our food security. If the Government want to stop tax evasion, they must work with the farming sector to find a solution that does not punish struggling farmers, because Welsh farmland belongs in Welsh farming hands.

15:34

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) for securing this incredibly important debate.

Here we are yet again, having summoned yet another Minister to the House. We have slowly worked our way through all the DEFRA Ministers, and now here we are with the Treasury. I welcome the new Treasury Minister to his place; he is replacing the Farming Minister, who seems to have disappeared from these debates. I hope the new Treasury Minister lasts longer in his post than the infamous “Ed Stone”, which he was so proud to have masterminded.

Let us remember why we are here. Last weekend, the NFU’s farming day of unity saw one of the biggest agricultural rallies, which took place in all parts of the United Kingdom, with people from all walks of life coming together to support our farmers. That followed protests outside supermarkets and Westminster, and at auction marts, but still the Government refuse to get behind our farming community and listen. Let them be under no illusion: the strength of feeling outside this place is rightly strong, and the issue will not go away.

When the Government announced this policy, I thought they were just being naive. Then I thought they were perhaps being arrogant. Now the only conclusion I can come to is that this is a vindictive policy aimed at our farming community. That is because the Government are still unwilling to listen to the concerns raised by Members and stakeholders, whether that be the NFU, the CLA or the Tenant Farmers Association. The Chancellor is yet to engage with any of them.

Although the Government will no doubt claim that only affect 27% of farms will be affected, research conducted by those industry experts concludes that at least 75% of commercial family farms will be, because the £1 million threshold will impact the many. This disconnect stems from significant flaws in the Government’s methodology, which fails to account for the many market conditions and economic realities that our farming businesses face.

Given that the average size of a farm is about 200 acres, the average value of a farm holding will without doubt be well in excess of the £1 million threshold. When we take into account the value of the farmland; the farmhouse, and potentially a cottage or two; and any stocks, machinery or growing crops that may be in store, it will exceed the £1 million cap, therefore impacting the farming business. When we take into account the profit that a business may be making—or indeed struggling to make—on an average-sized farm of 200 acres, it is going to struggle to pay that bill.

What do farmers do? What are the options available to them? They can sell assets to pay the inheritance tax bill, or they can sell some of the livestock or some of the machinery, stocks or crops that may be in store, all impacting the productivity of that farming unit. Alternatively, they may want to take out a loan, which is an option suggested by the Government. I do not know whether the Treasury Minister has spoken to any banks, but I have, and none of them is saying that they will offer a loan to pay a tax bill. That is because the gearing of many of our family farming businesses is so highly strung that they could not pay any additional loan that may be granted to them, because the serviceability of that debt, which probably exists alongside the family farming business they already occupy, is so strongly geared.

That is before we take into account all the other budgetary consequences the Government have brought about: the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions, the increase in the minimum wage, the immediate effect of delinked payments, the removal of capital grants, the fertiliser tax that will no doubt be introduced and the double-cab pick-up tax. All impact the profitability and productivity of our many family farming businesses. This policy will also lead to a significant reduction in the land available to rent, given that around two thirds of working farms rent some or all of their land.

That is before we take into account the human cost. Farming can be a very lonely business, and I fear that the added weight of the changes to not only agricultural property relief but business property relief will be forcing some of the older generation, including those who are seriously ill at the moment, to make decisions right now. Indeed, I have spoken to a few. I spoke to one farmer just last week who is aged 78 and in ill health. If he passes away before April 2026, any death tax will be zero. If he passes away after April 2026, the death tax imposed on his family will be over £1 million. What decisions is that individual having to make right now? Those are the consequences of the decisions and choices this Government have made.

Will the Government have the moral courage to pause their actions and consult the industry experts I mentioned, as well as Opposition Members who continue to raise concerns on behalf of their constituents? As the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), has rightly asked every time she has been at the Dispatch Box, will the Government record farm suicides in the next few months so that we can properly assess the human impact of the choices this Labour Government are making? What measures could be put in place to mitigate the impact of these changes on those who are already over retirement age or in serious ill health? They have held on to these assets for many years and many generations, and they simply want to be in a position to hand them down to the next generation.

I want to ask the Minister a few questions. Why on earth has an economic impact assessment been undertaken of the consequences of the changes to agricultural property relief, and of agricultural property relief dual-claimed with business property relief, but not solely of business property relief? Has any impact assessment been taken into account in the changes to inheritance tax, as well as the wider budgetary changes as a result of the measures I have already alluded to?

Why do the Government believe that it is unnecessary to take into account the size of a family farm when indicating the negative consequences that this proposal will have? If they implement a £1 million threshold, the size of a farm absolutely matters, because that takes into account not only the amount of land being farmed, but the existing productivity and the assets retained within that business. Why is the size of the farms not being taken into account?

If the Government are so determined to push ahead, can they tell us why on earth have they arrived at the £1 million threshold as the appropriate figure? How do they deal with the progressive disappearance of the residence nil rate band on estates valued at more than £2 million? How will they protect tenanted land on estates that will be valued at levels much higher than any threshold? What hope is there for the tenant farmer who is told that their landlord is now having to liquidate the capital value tied up in the land that they rent to satisfy the Government’s potential tax liability? As a result, that tenant farmer will have no tenancy, because the tenancy will have to come to an end. For the tenant farmer, that will mean losing their home, their business and their livelihood. No amount of tax planning will help those tenant farmers to find a way forward.

In setting out the £1 million threshold, the Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed that she wanted to protect hard-working family farmers. I can tell the Minister that all family farmers are hard-working, so why on earth was the threshold set at that level? On behalf of the tenant farming sector, I can say that whatever level is set, it will do nothing to protect our tenant farmers. They will be impacted by the collateral damage caused by the decisions their landlord will have to make.

Just this week, the noble Lord Mackinlay of Richborough received an answer to a written parliamentary question in the other place that stated that agricultural property relief and business property relief on assets tied up in private pension funds will not receive any of the reliefs that Ministers are citing. As the Pensions Minister, can the Minister confirm that and explain why the Government have further excluded farms held under those types of ownership from this calculation? Given the Government’s response in the other place, they will absolutely be impacted.

There is much more to do. As we have indicated, the Conservatives will reverse this disastrous family farm tax, which will impact hard-working family farms. The Opposition position is clear: this policy is bad for farming businesses, bad for rural economic growth, bad for food prices and bad for food security. Farmers can see it, the NFU can see it, the CLA can see it, the Tenant Farmers Association can see it and the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers—of which I must declare I am a fellow, Mr Stringer—can see it. The supermarkets can see it, the Opposition can see it and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden)—the one lonely Labour MP sitting on the Government Benches—can see it, so why on earth can the Government not see it?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Minister, we have a generous amount of time left. Can you try to ensure that you leave at least two minutes for a winding-up speech?

15:45

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) on securing this debate and for engaging with many different pronunciations of the name of her constituency over the course of the last hour and a half. She rightly makes a powerful case for Welsh farming, which all of us in south Wales would like to reinforce.

We will not all agree on the policy under discussion today, but we all agree that topics such as this are important to many and should be properly discussed in this place—ideally at a lower temperature than in this room. I have listened closely to the contributions to the debate, and I thank all hon. Members for setting out their views and for speaking on behalf of not only their constituents, but their acquaintances, friends and family members. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) made a clear case about the emotional, not just economic, importance of land to farmers and farming families. Most of us will have someone close to us who farms, but even those who do not will recognise the huge contribution that our farmers make to our food security, our economy and our rural communities. None of us takes those contributions for granted, and we have heard that today.

Before I turn to the specific points raised by hon. Members, I will briefly—I promise it will be brief—set out the context for the Budget decisions we are debating. This Government’s inheritance matters, however much the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) declines to mention it. We had unsustainable public finances, equally unsustainable and struggling public services, councils going bust and prisons overflowing, so tough decisions were unavoidable in the Budget if we were to restore economic stability, fix the public finances and support public service. That is the backdrop to the decision to reform agricultural property relief.

That decision was not taken lightly, but it was a necessary decision, not least because rural communities lose out more than most when health, transport and council services across the UK do not live up to the standards that any of us expect. It was the right decision, because the Government will maintain significant levels of inheritance tax relief for agricultural property, far beyond what is available for most assets, because we recognise the role that those reliefs play in supporting farmers.

The debate is really about how we balance the objectives of protecting family farms with the public finances and public services. The status quo—the full, unlimited exemption introduced in 1992—has become unsustainable. The benefits have become far too heavily skewed towards the wealthiest estates. Some 40% of agricultural property relief benefits the top 7% of estates making claims. The top 2% claim 22% of the relief, which means 37 estates are claiming £119 million in a single—

[John Glen]

The Minister is a serious economist with a serious track record in analysing public finances. With all due respect, given the significant uncertainty and the fact that numerous organisations representing farming interests outside the party political debate have asked serious questions about the deliverability of the scheme and the amount of money that will be raised, surely he must accept that there is time for people such as he to work with officials to find better ways of finding the sums that he says he needs—I am not disputing that—to do the right thing by the farming communities of this country and not cause the unintended damage that will clearly take effect.

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the right hon. Member for his kind words, even though I cannot agree with everything that followed. I will come on to some of the points that he raised shortly. I think this will come up several times in the course of what remains of the debate, but we cannot use farm valuation data to make claims about inheritance tax claims. On the latter, we have the actual data for the claims made, which is what we rely on.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Torsten Bell]

I will make some progress and then I will give way.

We see a similar picture for business property relief. It is in large part these reliefs that mean the largest estates pay materially lower rates of inheritance tax than more modest estates. That undermines faith in the fairness of our tax system more generally. Given the pressures we face, it cannot be right to leave this system unreformed, which is a point the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) made well.

That is the context and the rationale for the changes to how we will target agricultural property relief and business property relief from April 2026. Contrary to the claims that these reliefs are being scrapped, which I am afraid to say were repeated by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) just now, we will continue to provide significant tax relief, including for small farms and businesses. Individuals will still benefit from 100% relief for the first £1 million of combined business and agricultural assets. Importantly, the relief sits on top of all the other spousal exemption and nil-rate bands. Depending on people’s circumstances, up to £3 million can be passed on by a couple to their children or grandchildren free of inheritance tax.

[Jim Shannon]

I will try to be brief. On the rateable value, which the Minister mentioned earlier, my understanding after talking to the legal person of the Ulster Farmers’ Union is that the rateable value is based on whether the farm was handed over in the 1970s, in the 1980s, in the 1990s or even in the 2000s, but the rateable value does not show the real value of the land. Therefore, it is a flawed system. If it is a flawed system, the Minister needs to go back to the very beginning and look at it. I say that respectfully; I am not trying to catch anybody out. I am just saying that if something is not right, then get it right.

[Torsten Bell]

The point I was making was about the hon. Member’s point that the relief had been scrapped; I was just making the point that the reliefs have certainly not been scrapped and that they remain very generous indeed.

Beyond the thresholds I mentioned, the 50% relief will continue and there will be a reduced marginal inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the standard 40%. Furthermore, in response to the points raised by several Members today about the cash-flow challenges that some farms face, particularly after bad years like last year, I will point out that heirs can spread the payments over 10 years interest-free, which is a benefit that is not seen anywhere else in the inheritance tax system.

[Mr Carmichael]

If people are looking at a £400,000 bill, which is what they would pay on a £3 million farm, and they earn £25,000 a year, they will still struggle to make that payment in 10 years; in fact, it would be downright impossible. That is how the land gets sold.

[Torsten Bell]

I will not comment on the individual example the right hon. Gentleman gave, but in general he is right to say that there can be large variations in the profits of farms between years and between farms. That is partly why the tax system already allows us—uniquely for farmers—to average profits over periods of time. Obviously, our advice to all farmers who think they will be affected by the change is that they should seek advice in turn.

I turn to the impact that these reforms will have, as that has been the central focus of most comments today.

[Helen Morgan]

rose—

[Torsten Bell]

I will make some progress.

In 2026-27, up to 520 estates claiming agricultural property relief, including those that also claim business property relief, are expected to pay more as a result of this change. That means that around three quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief will not pay any more than they do now.

The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) asked questions about business property relief and specifically about claims that are not covered by agricultural property relief. Around three quarters of estates claiming business property relief alone—that is, the same proportion that have agricultural property relief, once we exclude those only holding alternative investment market or AIM shares, which are often held for the purpose of avoiding inheritance tax—will not pay any more inheritance tax in 2026-27. All estates making claims for these reliefs will continue to receive generous support, at a total cost of £1.1 billion to the Exchequer. The system will remain more generous than it was before 1992, when inheritance tax was applied at a maximum rate of 50%, including on the first £1 million that was passed on.

Several Members have implied that the change will end the passing-down of farms between generations. I gently point out in response that farmers, agricultural landowners and small business owners did not receive 100% relief on inheritance tax for almost all of the 20th century, yet farms and businesses were very much passed down between generations. Indeed, the tax system will continue to support that process. As the Institute of Fiscal Studies has said, our reforms will:

“still leave…land much more lightly taxed than most other assets”.

These changes should also be seen in the wider context of support we are providing for farmers and rural communities. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) was wrong in his comments about the Office for Budget Responsibility, as the document produced this week provides no new information. However, he was right about the importance of food security, as was the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe). That is why the Budget committed £5 billion to farming over the next two years, including the biggest budget for sustainable food production in our history. It also committed £60 million to help farmers affected by the unprecedented wet weather last winter. The wider tax system will also continue to support farming—tenants as well as owners—including through exemptions from business rates, the use of rebated diesel and the ability, as I said, to average tax affairs over a number of years.

As we have heard today, the reforms to inheritance tax generate strong views. I understand that. I recognise that a small number of estates will have to pay more. I have not hidden from that today, nor in conversations—

[Robbie Moore]

Will the Minister confirm when he and the Government will start listening to the points being made by everybody outside this place—different stakeholders, banks, accountants—

[Victoria Atkins]

Supermarkets!

[Robbie Moore]

And supermarkets. The Minister and Government are, dare I say it, alone on this point.

Secondly, as he did not allow my intervention earlier, will the Minister confirm why the Government are not taking into account the value and the size of agricultural units when projecting the impact the changes will have on family farming businesses and farming businesses?

[Torsten Bell]

The hon. Gentleman raises the question of supermarkets. Supermarkets can talk but there is a lot they could do directly to support our farmers—

[Robbie Moore]

You are not listening to the question.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Torsten Bell]

I listened to the question and I will make more progress. I have not hidden from what I have heard from individuals across the country about this issue in recent months, including from talking to farmers in mid-Wales and East Anglia. Reform of the reliefs is necessary if we are serious about putting our public finances on a stable footing and repairing our broken public services, including the schools, hospitals and roads that communities across the UK—

[Robbie Moore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Torsten Bell]

No, I am going to finish. Communities across the UK, including in rural areas, rely on those things every single day. We have taken these decisions to make the system fairer and more sustainable and the decisions come alongside significant new investments in farming and support for small business.

Thank you, Mr Stringer, and all those who have spoken today, in particular the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin for securing the debate. I look forward to her concluding remarks.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I call Ann Davies.

15:56

[Ann Davies]

Diolch yn fawr, Mr Stringer. First, I want to thank all hon. Members for their contributions today. I appreciate their words, interventions and speeches. This is so important for food security but for us in Wales it is also, as has been mentioned, about the Welsh language and our culture. As I mentioned in my speech, there are alternatives that could bring further taxation into the Treasury and, more importantly, secure our food-producing farms for future generations. I have to be honest, I am really disappointed with the response we have had from the Government and the Treasury today. It is not what I was hoping to hear.

The issue affects my constituency of Caerfyrddin—I will say it again so Members can tune in to the pronunciation, although I thank everyone for trying—where 60% of residents live rurally. It affects all rural constituencies, of all political colours. We are here to represent our constituents and I ask kindly if we can do that with integrity, purpose and fairness. We need to have a Welsh impact assessment of the APR and BPR and I call again on the Government to do that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of changes to Agricultural Property Relief.

A133-A120 Link Road

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I will call Sir Bernard Jenkin to move the motion and the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. I have been informed that two hon. Members have been given permission by the mover and the Minister to speak in the debate.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government funding for the A133-A120 link road.

Thank you very much, Mr Stringer. There may even be a third intervention from a colleague, which I hope will be all right with you. I should have notified you in advance, for which I apologise. I thank the Minister for taking part in this debate regarding the further funding of the new A1331 link road.

The top line is that central Government must fund phase 2 of this road. The previous Government committed to do so, and provided 100% grant via a housing infrastructure fund grant of £99.9 million in 2020. Since then covid and inflation have struck, and the grant is now £50 million to £60 million short of what is needed to complete the road. That estimate is hearsay and not official, but it does not seem unreasonable.

Essex county council has started the construction of phase 1 but phase 2 is not funded. The Government’s housing targets for Colchester and Tendring cannot be met without this vital new road. This development of 7,500 new homes is very substantial, but I support and understand the need for it. However, the development cannot be justified unless the road is completed in advance. Indeed, without completion of the road, the developers may well stop investing in the houses because the traffic will be intolerable and the new homes found to be unsaleable.

The proposed Tendring Colchester Borders garden community—or TCBGC—located between the A120 and the A133 north of the University of Essex, includes new primary and secondary schools, dedicated employment spaces, a nature reserve and a commitment to 30% affordable housing. The new homes will generate a huge increase in traffic. The new direct access to the A120 and the A133 is essential for the viability of the development. It will also significantly mitigate local adverse traffic impacts, both during the construction phase and as the new homes are occupied.

The whole project now hinges on phase 2, which will complete the link to the A120. Without phase 2 the A1331 will be a road to nowhere, and only add to traffic on already congested roads. There is no viable or agreed funding for phase 2. I hope I do not have to disabuse the Government of that fact. Many councillors and local people fear that phase 2 will never be completed. So far, the Government have told the county council, “There is no budget” for any additional funding.

My first question is this: will the Government please now consider making up the shortfall? I wrote to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on 11 November and received a reply just last night. These debates have a purpose: they provoke a response. I am grateful for the Minister’s letter, in this case from Baroness Taylor, in which she states:

“Essex county council and Latimer (the housing developer) have committed to use reasonable endeavours to procure delivery of phase 2…And in order to safeguard its delivery, there is a planning policy requirement for the developer to demonstrate funding is in place for the full link road.”

I put it to the Minister that this really is wishful thinking. Think about it: 7,500 homes and a £60 million contribution to finish phase 2—that is £8,000 per home, and that is just for the road. Where is all the other section 106 funding required for this development going to come from?

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing the debate.

In November 2024 I had the pleasure of joining partners from Essex county council, Colchester city council, Latimer, Clarion Housing and Homes England, as well as contractors, to see the start of phase 1 of the link road. As the hon. Member rightly said, it is just phase 1, and we need phase 2 to be completed. Speeding up phase 2 by creating a deal with those partners, including the Government, will be a vital part of that. I hope he will support initiatives around that, as we have already been having those kinds of discussions. I also invite the Minister to visit the project to see just how short a link road will be required to complete what will be an outstanding development that straddles both our constituencies.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The hon. Lady is clearly keener on the development than I am, but if the Government come up with some money to make this whole development viable again, I will of course resume my support for it. I would also very much welcome a visit from the Minister, but it remains to be seen whether we will get one. I am afraid that I refused to attend that event in November because I thought it was irresponsible to start a road if nobody knew how it would be funded or when it would be completed. The Minister may, in her response today, refer to a December memorandum of understanding on this matter between Essex county council, the Colchester and Tendring councils and Latimer, but I have to point out to her and to the Department that this is not a binding agreement. Paragraph 1.6 states that the funding of infrastructure, including the A1331 link road, is contingent, and that it

“will only be possible if the overall delivery of TCBGC is financially viable.”

Remember that it is £8,000 per home just for the road. TCBGC will no longer be financially viable. Financial contributions through section 106 will not be enough to cover the cost of phase 2 of the road along with all the other essential infrastructure plans for this development.

What has got to give? Will we finish up with more GP practices closing their lists and not accepting more patients, or more schools without places for local kids? Section 106 funding should be for local infrastructure, not for national infrastructure such as this proposed new A road. The clue is in the term “A road”—it is part of the trunk road network. What is the benefit-cost ratio for this new road? The original funding application said 7:1. A 7:1 benefit-cost ratio is well above the threshold of “very high”, which is only 4:1, so this public investment will give very big payback for the local economy, jobs and tax revenues.

Can the Minister provide us with a benefit-cost ration for just phase 1, which the Government have now retrospectively agreed to fund on its own? This was approved via a material amendment to the grant determination agreement that the Government have signed, allowing the county council to build just phase 1 with the grant money so far allocated. The Government agreement makes them complicit in the wishful thinking that this development will be viable. My guess is that the benefit-cost ratio for just phase 1 will be at rock bottom. It will have very little economic benefit at all, and would never have passed muster if it had been proposed as part of the funding arrangements at the outset.

Without knowing what the phase 1 benefit-cost ratio is, how could the Government possibly justify turning down the request for funding to complete the A1331 link road? I speculate that the benefit-cost ratio of finishing the road is off the scale because of the sunk costs already committed. Labour has promised growth and new homes to voters, but with infrastructure first—

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I would have preferred earlier notice of the intervention, but I will of course give way to the hon. Lady.

[Marie Goldman]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman and thank him for giving way. His point is about the importance of infrastructure coming first. Just down the road from the proposed A1331 is the A12 widening scheme, which affects my constituency of Chelmsford, which will potentially affect the delivery of 55,000 new homes, and for which we are waiting for confirmation of funding. Those homes would, of course, go a long way towards meeting the Government’s 1.5 million target. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the “infrastructure first” principle is crucial, and that the Government must not overlook it when they are considering funding?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

If the Government want to achieve anything like their 1.5 million target, they will have to put the money up front for the infrastructure. Here is a shovel-ready deal for the Government to show their commitment to achieve their target of 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament. If the promised 7,500 new homes are not built because phase 2 of the A1331 is not completed, then Colchester city council and Tendring district council do not have a chance of achieving the Government’s ambition. Without phase 2 of the road being completed ahead of the new homes—which was the original intention—the most likely outcome is that the new garden community will be started and then stalled. There is already standstill traffic every day on the A133 where the southern end of the A1331 is intended to relieve traffic congestion. A few hundred new homes will just add to that gridlock.

In November, in my letter to the Secretary of State, I made it clear that I have not, until now, felt the need to object to this massive housing development in my constituency. I recognise the need for new housing, but my support is contingent on the principle of “infrastructure first”. If there is no new money from the Government and nobody can say when the road will be completed, I will object, and so will the vast majority of the people of Colchester and Tendring. The Government are shifting responsibility on to the developer and local authorities for the road on which the viability of the whole scheme depends. I therefore ask the Minister—although somehow I do not expect a conclusive answer today—to top up the housing infrastructure fund grant so that it covers 100% of the cost, as originally intended, and to publish the benefit-cost ratio of just funding phase 1, so that we can see what poor value limited HIF funding now represents. I also ask the Government to affirm the principle of “infrastructure first”—I hope the Minister can do so—and ask for their acknowledgment that the section 106 money is not appropriate for funding a major piece of national infrastructure. An A road is being proposed here, not a local road, which is why central Government should fund it.

I notified you, very late, Mr Stringer, that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) might want to add a few words.

16:13

[Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)]

I am here to support my geographical neighbour, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). He is absolutely right: it would be wholly irresponsible to commence the building of thousands of houses without knowing that a road will be completed. So I completely support what he says, and I am sure that constituents in all neighbouring constituencies overwhelmingly agree.

I just wonder whether, when these things are debated, be it here or in the main Chamber, we ever pause for a moment to understand what we have done—what both Conservative and Labour Governments have done—a 10 million increase in the population in the last 20 years; the Office for National Statistics this morning suggesting that another 3 million to 4 million will be added in the next few years. These are all problems of uncontrolled mass migration and the population explosion. I wonder whether many Members level with their constituents about the causal factors here.

16:14

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rushanara Ali)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing this important debate and for highlighting his concerns about this project, and I thank other hon. Members for their interventions. As someone who spent many years securing debates of this form to raise important issues affecting my constituency, I know how much these debates matter to constituency MPs.

The Government recognise that there are significant benefits to high-quality, large-scale developments that deliver much-needed housing. I am grateful that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex acknowledges the importance of housing in communities such as his and those up and down the country. We recognise that the right infrastructure must be put in place first, including the right transport infrastructure. Without that, facilities and transport become overstretched. One of the consequences is congestion and delays for existing residents and commercial traffic.

The housing infrastructure fund was established in 2017, primarily to provide up-front infrastructure funding to support the delivery of large-scale strategic housing developments. The £4.2 billion fund will unlock 260,000 homes, 30,000 of which have already been started, with a further 73,000 completions expected during this Parliament. That will make a significant contribution to the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes, which is a major commitment of this Government—previous Governments also had commitments around house building, recognising the need for housing in our country.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex spoke about the Tendring Colchester Borders garden community project in his constituency. That project is expected to initially unlock 5,000 homes at the garden community, and that figure will increase over time to a total of 7,500. The hon. Member highlighted a number of points, and I will restate some of them. This Government are providing £99.9 million from the housing infrastructure fund for Essex county council to build a rapid transit system high-speed bus route. That will run from the north to the south of Colchester, connecting to the new community. I am pleased to note that that is under construction.

I appreciate the concerns that the hon. Member shared about the second item of infrastructure being funded: the A1331 link road, which will connect the A133 and A120. Over the past few years, infrastructure projects across the country have been affected by a number of unexpected factors, such as the pandemic, rising inflation, the shortage of skilled labour and other external events, and in a constrained fiscal environment the Government have had to make tough decisions.

Due to the escalation of the costs with the Tendring project, it is no longer possible to construct the entire link road with the funding available. Additionally, there continue to be delivery challenges with sections of the road, particularly in relation to land acquisition. In response to the request from Essex county council in 2023, the previous Government made the decision to use the available grant to only fund phase 1 of the link road. I appreciate the hon. Member’s concerns about that descoping of the project. I assure him that, together with the first phase of the link road, the existing local road network is sufficient to support 5,000 homes in the garden community. Moreover, I assure him that the intention to deliver the full link remains.

To that end, there is ongoing engagement between Homes England and local partners on the support that will enable the full link road to be delivered as soon as possible. That includes capacity funding to support planning, facilitation of joint working between public and private sector partners, and cross-Government brokerage support, which I hope addresses some of the points the hon. Member raised.

Both Essex county council and the housing developer, Latimer, have committed to use reasonable endeavours to procure delivery of phase 2. Additionally, to safeguard its delivery, there is a planning policy requirement for the developer to demonstrate that funding is in place for the full link road. My Department is also providing support through our new homes accelerator programme, which will help with the pre-planning process for the garden community.

Tendring Colchester Borders garden community is an important project in an area of high demand. The housing infrastructure fund grant is a catalyst for a wider £250 million private sector investment into infrastructure. The new community will include a new country park and significant green and blue infrastructure, promoting sustainable and active travel, a new 25-hectare sports and leisure park to be used in conjunction with the University of Essex, and a new 17-hectare business park for general employment, business and industrial purposes. The Government are committed to the full delivery of the infrastructure originally planned under the housing and infrastructure fund grant.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The Minister is saying one or two interesting things. First, I have never heard anybody say—I wrote down what she said—that the “local road network is sufficient to support 5,000 homes”. I do not know who has told her that, but I promise her that she has been misinformed. On the point she just made about all the other desirable infrastructure for the development, that has to come out of the section 106 money, which will now, according to the MOU, be diverted to the road. Section 106 money is not unlimited. The possible £60 million for the development—to fund that road—is a very large sum. It is £8,000 per household. Why is she convinced that this is still a viable development?

[Rushanara Ali]

The hon. Member has set out his critique. What is important is that we get it right, and that requires close working, with him and other hon. Members, and my Department, and that is why the brokerage element of what we do is really important. He makes very important points; we can continue the conversation beyond this debate, as I appreciate that there are a number of complex issues that need to be worked through. However, we are determined to support the development and ensure that it is a success.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I have little doubt that the delegated authority of the three combined authorities will be minded to give planning permission come what may. However, I reckon that the decision would be subject to judicial review if the road is not guaranteed at the time of planning permission being granted. It is a policy decision to ensure that the road is guaranteed, but what else is then taken away? That itself will be challengeable under judicial review, given that it will be so far from the original plan. I am grateful to hear from the Minister that she wants the conversation to continue. Long may it continue, and I hope that we can reach a satisfactory solution.

[Rushanara Ali]

I am grateful to the hon. Member, who is an extremely diligent Member of this House, with many years of experience, and a great campaigner. He makes important points about planning matters, which obviously I cannot go into, but I look forward to working with him.

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. This Government are committed to making sure we deliver on housing, but it is of course extremely important that we continue to work closely with hon. Members to make sure we address the issues that come up. I very much look forward to continuing the discussion with the hon. Member and to ensuring that my Department can do what it can to support a successful way through on this project.

Question put and agreed to.

16:24

Sitting suspended.

Defence Procurement: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

16:40

[Alan Strickland (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered SME participation in defence procurement.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I recognise that procurement is not usually a topic that gets pulses racing, but the threats posed to the UK and our allies certainly should. Central to our ability to rise to these challenges is using the defence industrial strategy to unleash the inventiveness, ingenuity and creativity of British industry.

I will cover three things: our need to respond to the changing face of warfare; adopting a proactive entrepreneurial approach to acquiring the defence supplies we need; and the practical steps we can take to place small and medium-sized enterprises innovation in the service of our national defence.

I turn first to our need to respond to the changing face of warfare. Technology has been rapidly altering the nature of warfare at a pace rarely witnessed before. We see this most clearly in Ukraine, where drone technology has rewritten the rules of modern conflict. Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the resulting war have shown us the incredible speed at which military technology is advancing. Reconnaissance drones paint detailed maps of occupied territory, helping to guide unmanned attack drones in strikes on Russian vehicles and equipment. The role of this technology is now so important that a dedicated branch of the Ukrainian military has been established to deploy it. Here at home, I have seen first hand the RAF’s latest unmanned air systems as part of an armed forces parliamentary scheme visit.

Drones, artificial intelligence and rapidly evolving satellite technology are being used to redefine all aspects of conflict, from the battlefield to the information war, to who controls space. Amid those significant and growing global threats, it is vital that Britain is at the forefront of developments to ensure that we can defend not only ourselves, but our allies and interests across the globe.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing today’s debate on SME participation in defence procurement. Having run my own start-up construction business in bonnie Scotland many years ago, I can appreciate full well that small and medium-sized enterprises are not given their due and rightful importance by Government structures, and more generally. The Government’s own Green Paper notes there is a need

“to address issues that inhibit or prevent growth in the defence sector”.

Does my hon. Friend agree that defence contract opportunities must be made more accessible to SMEs in order for us to support their growth and continue innovation?

[Alan Strickland]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right: across the economy with the Government’s growth mission, defence must be a crucial sector, but as he has said, too often SMEs are shut out by bureaucratic processes, which I will be keen to talk more about.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this topic forward. He is absolutely right to recognise the importance of SMEs and what they can do. In Northern Ireland, Thales invented and produced the NLAW— the next-generation light anti-tank weapon—which slowed down the Russian advance; Thales is also at the forefront of cybersecurity, and all those things are very important. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, when it comes to supporting all SMEs across the United Kingdom—those 434,000 jobs—Northern Ireland must be an integral part of that? I know that is what the hon. Gentleman and the Minister think, and it really is the way forward.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. This debate is for an hour and is well-subscribed, so I ask hon. Members to be brief in their interventions.

[Alan Strickland]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right that the commitment of Ministers and the defence industrial strategy to sovereign supply must include all parts of our United Kingdom, including the excellent capabilities in Northern Ireland.

Being war-ready for conflicts we cannot predict that will use technology that has not yet been invented, means giving our military the agility and capability to adapt to this changing landscape. Changing the way in which we think about defence procurement is central to this. My second point is around adopting a proactive, entrepreneurial approach to acquiring the defence supplies we need.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for securing this important debate.

Universal Quantum is an SME based in Haywards Heath, in my constituency, which builds utility scale quantum computers. It already works in partnership with leading organisations and investors in the field. Does the hon. Gentleman agree the Ministry of Defence should ensure emerging technologies, such as quantum computing, that are being spearheaded by SMEs like Universal Quantum are part of its procurement strategy?

[Alan Strickland]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I agree. As she rightly says, warfare is developing very quickly and high-tech solutions, of the excellent type she described in her constituency, must absolutely be part of that.

When I talk to innovative SMEs at the Durham University spinout science park in my constituency, it is clear we need to think differently about defence procurement. NETPark in Sedgefield is home to more than 40 cutting-edge firms, many of which supply major defence companies and our allies across the globe. They include Kromek, which invented new ways of detecting radiation and biological weaponry; Filtronic, which manufactures satellite components; and Graphene Composites, which produces ultra-light ballistic shields. Their experiences suggest that we need to do more to remain globally competitive. As other hon. Members have rightly said, too often small businesses can feel that UK defence procurement focuses on process at the expense of outcomes and can stifle bottom-up inventiveness with top-down bureaucracy.

Our allies show us how we might do this differently. The United States Defence Department takes a broader approach to encouraging and funding military innovation. SMEs are encouraged to approach the Government directly with ideas for new products or with potential technologies they are developing and to showcase tech solutions to problems that may not have even been considered yet by officials. In turn the US Defence Department and its research agency, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, proactively seek out innovative small companies that offer new ideas and technologies that contribute to tackling future military challenges.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing today’s debate. Is he suggesting that the Ministry of Defence needs to completely change its culture and processes in the way it liaises with these important and innovative companies? Certainly that appears to be the issue in my constituency, where there are many very innovative SMEs.

[Alan Strickland]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I absolutely agree. In my previous life in the housing and the charity sector, I have interacted with Government procurement across Departments. There is a challenge with culture across Whitehall, as my hon. Friend says, of often struggling to deal with the realities of innovative and agile small firms.

The approach I described means the US spends around a quarter of its entire military budget directly with SMEs, much higher than the comparable figure for the UK. The UK Defence and Security Accelerator does good work in directly using SMEs to fill technology gaps. However Northern Defence Industries, representing more than 300 companies, has called on the MOD to do more to facilitate open call competition. That would allow SMEs to showcase their defence products directly to Government, without having to wait for specific procurement projects and tenders to be opened.

I strongly welcome the intention of Defence Ministers to use the defence industrial strategy to drive engagement with non-traditional contractors, including SMEs. We have a real opportunity to change the way Government think about procurement and a real chance to grow the culture, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central (Matt Rodda) referred, that gives us the wartime pace of innovation that we need. Just as Churchill’s groundbreaking military technology labs did during the second world war, let us use the resources of the British state to harness the inventiveness and ingenuity offered by our world-leading science and tech companies.

Turning finally to the practical steps we can take to place SME innovation in the service of our national defence, one of the key things we could look at is the reliance across Government on the prime contractor model. In practice this means that the Ministry of Defence often uses large contractors to work with SMEs further down the supply chain rather than engaging with them directly. For some years it has been common across Government, under all parties, to shift to working with smaller pools of larger suppliers. That has some obvious benefits, such as reducing the number of contracts that officials need to manage, transferring financial risk and outsourcing much day-to-day contract management, but there is also evidence that the approach can have its downsides, particularly in squeezing out smaller, innovative suppliers. When I worked in the charity sector, strengthening the prime contractor approach in delivering the Work programme led to a number of innovative charities with a real track record of getting people into jobs being unable to work with Government in the future.

So what can be done? Where possible, let us try to reserve complex framework contracts for large projects that genuinely need them, reducing the proportion of tenders available only to prime contractors. Where large contracts are required, can we look at these to see whether we can break them down into smaller components that are more accessible to SMEs? Secondly, where working through a prime contractor is the right answer, could we strengthen the requirements for them to engage with SMEs proactively and simplify contract arrangements? Thirdly, could we open up opportunities for the Ministry of Defence to contract directly with SMEs by removing red tape and doing so with an agile and entrepreneurial mindset? If businesses at NETpark can be direct suppliers to DARPA, the US Defence Department, NASA and other allied Governments, I am confident that, through the defence industrial strategy, we too can open up more opportunities for SMEs.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. To simplify the point he is making, we should all remember that from small acorns great oaks grow, and even big companies in my constituency such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems will have started at some point as an SME. What he is suggesting today would help those SMEs that we all have in our constituencies maybe one day to grow into those grand great oaks.

[Alan Strickland]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Considering that we have shop-bought drones making such a difference in Ukraine and that technology is being used in all sorts of ways, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to hunt out and support the small, innovative businesses doing very different and distinctive work in constituencies around the country.

It has been a privilege to set out some of the challenges faced by our innovative SMEs and how the defence industrial strategy can address them. I look forward to welcoming the Minister to my constituency soon for a business roundtable to discuss these issues in more detail. I strongly welcome the Government’s putting growth at the heart of the new defence industrial strategy. The defence sector supports one in 60 jobs in the UK, the majority of which are outside London, so this is a real and tangible way of spreading growth, skills and opportunity to all corners of our country. More than that, if we can improve the way we work with SMEs, it will allow us to build an ironclad, sovereign supply of vital defence equipment. Not only will that provide jobs and drive growth but it will protect us from global shocks in the supply chain.

Warfare is changing, and we must change with it. Global production is threatened, so we must ensure sovereign supply. As the threat grows, so must our defence manufacturing base. I look forward to working with Defence Ministers on this important strategy and to further contributions from hon. Members of all parties in this debate.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. We will start with a three-minute time limit on speeches.

16:53

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland), who has done us all a great service in securing this debate. I want to use my limited time to draw attention to some fantastic SMEs, including one in particular that is based near Honiton in the south-west.

The south-west has an absolutely fantastic defence industry, which is powering up the region and making for some fantastic industrial developments. The Ministry of Defence employs about 33,000 people directly in the south-west, but of course there is also a huge, integrated supply chain that supports many more jobs besides. It is surely the aim of the new Government to have a more innovative and resilient supply chain.

Supacat has been producing vehicles in Dunkeswell in Devon for more than 40 years and is at the forefront of designing and supplying cutting-edge tactical military vehicles. Its high-mobility transporter vehicles have been used by British forces in Afghanistan and on UN deployments in Mali. More than 95% of its supply chain comes from UK-based SMEs, 85% of which are in the south-west. It currently has a contract with Defence Equipment and Support; the Ministry of Defence is buying 70 Jackals and 53 Coyotes, as the Minister will know.

In the past, there has sometimes been an instinct to buy off the shelf and from overseas, which would be a huge mistake in relation to the procurement of vehicles for the impending short-range air defence—SHORAD—programme. That instinct to look overseas in the first instance weakens investment, reduces long-term job security and, ultimately, puts future domestic procurement at risk. Supacat has more than 150 skilled workers in Devon, but its future depends on orders that will be delivered beyond November 2025.

The Defence Secretary intends the new defence industrial strategy to boost world-class production and manufacturing, and I understand that supporting UK exports will be key to that. It is incumbent on us to buy from fantastic companies such as Supacat, if we then look to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Czechia and Ireland to buy the Jackal, as they have done. To conclude, there are some fantastic SMEs, including Supacat at Dunkeswell, and I commend to that company the House.

16:56

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on bringing this debate to the House. I wholeheartedly agree that the Government need to work in close partnership with businesses of all sizes, and the Government have made it clear to me that they recognise the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises entering the defence procurement programme. I commend the Government’s engagement with the sector and I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for agreeing to visit Stockton North to meet local businesses in a region steeped in industrial heritage, resilience and innovation.

Through the money spent on defence, the Government can satisfy their mission of building more in Britain and increasing skilled jobs in all corners of the country. Teesside and Stockton North are places that not only built the bridges and structures of the past, but are ready to lead the future of our nation’s defence capabilities. Teesside industries have long been the backbone of British manufacturing, and today the Teesside defence and innovation cluster stands poised to drive next-generation defence matériel. I will give the Minister a taster of some of the businesses that she will see on her visit to Stockton North.

Tracerco is a business based in Billingham in my constituency. Its cutting-edge detection equipment, already being deployed in Ukraine, is saving lives and ensuring the safety of soldiers in some of the most dangerous environments on Earth. Wilton, situated on the banks of the Tees, has a proud history of precision engineering and fabrication. It is expanding its work in the defence sector, demonstrating how Teesside’s industrial expertise can be the cornerstone for delivering the complex infrastructure projects that our armed forces need.

Of course, RelyOn Nutec is a facility with a name that is synonymous with world-class training. Generations of offshore workers have passed through its doors, and it is now preparing the workforce for the next wave of defence projects, ensuring that we have the skills that we need for the challenges ahead. Teesside is a region with a proud history, but more than that, a bold future, and is prepared to bolster the nation’s resilience in an era of increasing global volatility. From the steel forged in Redcar to the innovation being crafted today, we have always been a place of strength and ingenuity.

16:59

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I commend the hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) for bringing this matter to the House.

As has already been referred to, Northern Ireland has a rich history in defence and in the production necessary to maintain defence. That is true in the large business sector where, for example, we have Thales, which of course has led the way in next-generation defence equipment. The primary thing I will say to the Minister today, however, is that we also have a great layer of SMEs under that in Northern Ireland that are not getting a fair crack of the whip when it comes to MOD procurement.

I say that on the strength of evidence given to a parliamentary inquiry by ADS Group—the trade association. It set out some very stark figures for 2022-23, the most recent year for which we have relevant data, that said that all the Government contracts to Northern Ireland SMEs in that year amounted to a paltry £2 million. For Scotland, the figure was £29 million and for the much-favoured south-west of England, the figure was £408 million. Even though 95% of ADS Group members are SMEs, Northern Ireland SMEs got only 0.15% of MOD expenditure in 2022-23. How can that be fair? My basic appeal to the Department and to the Minister is for fairness, a level playing field and equity in the distribution of contracts.

We have remarkable skills in many of our SMEs and we have many leaders in the digital and technology sector. Some of them subcontract to Thales, but all those firms have much to contribute in their own right. I say to the Minister that we must bring some equity to the situation. It can never be fair that in 2022-23, the MOD’s per capita spend on all contracts was £100 in Northern Ireland, £380 in Scotland and England, and £250 in Wales. Let us have some levelling up.

17:02

[Chris Evans (Caerphilly) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on securing this timely debate.

I also welcome—quite belatedly—the Minister to her place. She has an extremely tough job, as was underlined by Sir Jeremy Quin, the former right hon. Member for Horsham, who had her role in the last Conservative Administration, when he said:

“Defence procurement is never easy—it is a tough thing to get right—and I have not yet found a state anywhere on earth that can really deliver to the kind of standards that I am sure the hon. Gentleman would wish to see.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2022; Vol. 684, c. 718.]

That is further underlined by the latest figures from the MOD about Government projects, which were set out in the portfolio in March 2024. That document said that 88 projects are on red, 18 are on amber and only one is on green. Behind those figures is a supply chain that will also be affected. Many firms in that supply chain will be small and medium-sized businesses that do not have large bid-writing or tendering teams. Under the Procurement Act 2023, if all goes according to plan, SMEs will spend less time bidding for contracts that they do not win and many of the tick-box exercises will be reserved for the company that is offered the work.

During my time in opposition, I was often told that the MOD has a tendency to change its mind at short notice. The best example of this, which I am sure the Minister has sleepless nights about, is the Ajax programme; it wasted £5.5 billion, including in my former constituency.

It is important to strike the right balance between removing unnecessary red tape and ensuring that contractors can prove that they are up to the job. When I was in opposition, the most important thing that I learned when speaking to SMEs was about late payments. In all the time that I shadowed the role of the Minister for Defence Procurement, I got angry only once, when a prime contractor stood in front of me and said, “Now we’ve finally been paid by the MOD, we can pay the supply chain”—18 months later.

The businesses involved in the supply chain are not large—very often, they consist of just five or six people being innovative—yet they lose out because prime contractors put the needs of other people above their needs. Of course, there will always be examples of good practice, but one major defence contractor operating here in the UK was, at the last count, taking an average of 101 days to pay its supply chain. Would any of us accept a three or four-month wait to get paid?

In 2020, multiple major defence firms were suspended from the prompt payment code for consistently failing to pay their suppliers on time. SMEs across all sectors spend a total of 50 million hours a year chasing payments. If the Government mean what they say about promoting productivity and growth in defence SMEs, addressing late payment must surely be a priority going forward.

Voluntary codes are all very well, but they are just that—voluntary. If we are serious about this issue, we must enshrine redress in legislation. It is unacceptable to pay our SMEs—the lifeblood of our economy—late, and there should be penalties for that. Late payments create cash-flow problems, which in turn affect SMEs’ access to finance. That cannot go on.

17:05

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on securing this important debate. He spoke about the importance of defence procurement for our region in particular, and our potential for strengthening our national economy and national security.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) says, for decades, Teesside has helped to build and power our economy, and the steel forged in our furnaces became the bones of bridges, railways, and skyscrapers around the world. We once built the world, and today we stand ready to defend it. In addition to the examples that we have heard of Teesside innovators working at the cutting edge, I will give an example from my constituency—that of Tees Components.

Tees Components provides the precision machining required to service the state-of-the-art equipment that our Navy relies on, such as the bow thrusters used on Astute-class submarines. Such manufacturers play an integral role in developing local skills through high-level skills training and apprenticeships, and in delivering good-quality jobs in an area that really needs them, but where talent and tenacity are never in short supply. Too often, however, such companies—with world-leading innovation and a proven track record—are left to struggle for a seat at the table. It is clear to me, and to other Members, that there is much more to do to open up procurement for SMEs.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor on the need to improve engagement with SMEs. The Federation of Small Businesses has long called for a centrally managed body to oversee MOD contracts; I wonder whether the new strategic leadership of the national armaments director, as promised by the Government, can help to disaggregate some of those contracts and deliver the changes that are required.

Currently, only 4% of direct MOD expenditure goes to SMEs, and indirect involvement in the supply chain often proves unsustainable. Although large multinationals typically receive payments within five days, SMEs often face late payments, as we have heard. One solution could be specifically earmarking a portion of the prime contractor bid funding to support SME participation. That could include measures to mitigate financial risk, such as up-front payments.

I believe that the new Labour Government understand the challenges that we face. We have already heard some of the measures being taken to reform defence procurement and make it work for Britain. I am proud that the Government have identified defence as a growth-driving sector in our industrial strategy and I welcome the work under way in the SDR and in the defence industrial strategy to ensure that British business is prioritised in procurement.

This debate is about ensuring that we invest in defence, but it is also about ensuring that we invest in our communities—our workers, engineers and innovators who want a chance to contribute to Britain’s success. It is about remembering that national security does not begin and end on the battlefront, but in the workshops and design labs of Skelton or Sedgefield.

17:08

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

I thank you, Mr Stringer, for the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship and my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) for tabling this important debate. The UK defence sector is recognised as a global leader: Government defence spending supports more than 400,000 jobs across the UK, and many jobs in my constituency. I therefore welcomed the Defence Secretary’s announcement of plans to develop a new defence industrial strategy with the aim of producing a better—more integrated, more innovative and more resilient—defence sector in the UK. I therefore want to make the point loud and clear to the Minister that, in my constituency of Mansfield, we are well prepared to support the Government in that mission, and indeed are already doing so.

I draw particular attention to a local business, Glenair, which I will visit next month. It employs about 1,000 people in my constituency and works to supply products that are critical to our defence, including military aerospace, nuclear and military land systems. Glenair is driving those innovations; in fact, it is on the cutting edge of innovation. I am pleased that the Government want to do all they can to support this industry, and therefore companies such as Glenair, here in the UK. Glenair is a fantastic example of an employer that is investing in its workforce. This year, it took on almost 60 apprentices across a wide range of disciplines, not just in engineering. It established those apprenticeships well before the apprenticeship levy was introduced, because it recognises how important well-supported, well-trained and highly skilled workers are to its business. This is also why it is crucial for us as a Government to invest in further and higher education.

Let me summarise my main points: first, we already have some fantastic innovative businesses here in the UK; secondly, investing in education and looking at how we can be more innovative will make a significant difference to delivering on our objectives; and, thirdly, in Mansfield we are unashamedly ready to support the Government in doing so. During the election campaign last summer, I promised to deliver on local missions for the people of Mansfield. One of them was to do everything in my power to help provide a stable and growing economy with good-quality jobs for everyone. With that in mind, I invite the Minister to visit Mansfield so that she can see for herself the fantastic opportunities that are available. Let us work together so that we can play our part in delivering that objective.

17:11

[Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) for securing this important debate. He is a huge champion for SMEs in his constituency and for national security in general.

I will begin by pointing out that defence primes are not evil. They do not set out to harm British national security. They do amazing things, and some of the things we are proudest of in Britain—sovereign capabilities —are delivered by those primes. It is no surprise that a huge proportion of defence spending goes to them, because some of the capabilities that they deliver—things that give us our unique edge in the world—are the most expensive things on the British balance sheet.

Primes do not have to be negative in the context of SMEs either, because they can offer SMEs something that we all know is missing: the ability to communicate with the Government. By joining with primes, SMEs are sometimes able to advertise their ability to the Government in a way that they would not be able to otherwise.

[Richard Foord]

To reinforce the hon. Member’s point, the way that Supacat has teamed up with Babcock in Plymouth in recent years to scale up its skilled workforce by 60% is an example of what he is describing.

[Fred Thomas]

The hon. Member is absolutely correct. It is not quite in my constituency—it is in the neighbouring constituency, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport—but I agree.

In terms of SMEs, primes can also offer a service to the Government and the Ministry of Defence. If we had a massive change in system, which would be extremely hard to execute, and the MOD was suddenly able to procure directly from SMEs across the country, we would have an enormous challenge of integrating the different capabilities into a usable platform. Half of the things would not be able to talk to each other; they would be made to do their one task and we would then try to put on top of them a second radar system or some piece of satellite that could speak down to whatever comms link we were using. That is enormously expensive. However, primes can do that integration. They can go to the Government and say, “You have a demand signal to do something,” rather than to have a particular capability—to monitor the North sea, for example—and then go out to the SMEs in different constituencies that hon. Members have highlighted so fantastically, gather various bits of capability and knit that into one big package to sell to the Government. That would feel more expensive and slower to the Government, but it could be cheaper in the long term, in some instances.

That said, I and colleagues are overwhelmed almost daily by individuals in the UK defence industry reaching out on LinkedIn or by email, begging the Government to listen to what they are offering. They are patriotic people who think they can save us money and give us strategic advantage by delivering a piece of capability, when we currently spend obscene amounts of money on something that sometimes does not work well or produce the desired effect. I would love the Minister to give us a sense of what the Government are going to do differently from previous Governments to actively offer a forum for those SMEs to pitch their capabilities. I am immensely proud of the Secretary of State and the Minister who joins us today for their work so far—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order.

17:15

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on securing this important debate.

SMEs are the backbone of the UK economy and a vital part of our defence industry. They bring agility, innovation and high-quality jobs to communities across the country. Yet despite their immense potential, SMEs face significant barriers to fully contributing to our national defence procurement. There is a real and long-standing problem across the MOD’s defence procurement system: it is beset by inefficiencies, including delays, overspends and rigid processes.

Liberal Democrats believe it is time for a fresh, ambitious approach to tackle those challenges. Our plan focuses on flexibility, accountability and long-term strategy. We would replace the current rigid system of defence reviews with a more flexible system of continuous reviews of security threats and evolution of defence plans. That would enable procurement to evolve in response to emerging security threats and rapidly advancing technologies. Further, we would integrate defence procurement into a comprehensive industrial strategy. That would ensure a reliable pipeline of equipment procurement, safeguard jobs and skills, and promote UK-based businesses.

Collaboration with NATO and European partners is key to developing cutting-edge technologies and ensuring interoperability. For the areas of defence where we wish to maintain our sovereign capabilities, we must achieve that through greater collaboration with domestic SMEs. The survival of SMEs, such as small technology businesses, is dependent on their ability to develop and deploy innovative products at extraordinary speed. They are configured for agility, fast-paced decision making and recruitment of high-value talent.

By contrast, Government organisations, including the MOD, operate within more complex mandates and constrained budgets. It is neither realistic nor efficient for the Government to attempt to replicate the private sector’s pace of innovation. The MOD must improve its procurement processes to leverage the agility of SMEs.

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the Lib Dem defence spokesperson for allowing me to intervene. The Procurement Act 2023 was intended to make it easier for small businesses to access public sector procurement. Does she agree that it is now for the Government to set out clearly what other support will be made available to already busy SMEs, to remove the complexities and barriers as they seek to gain contracts within the pipeline?

[Helen Maguire]

I absolutely agree and will come to that later in my speech.

By focusing its limited research and development budget on adapting high potential dual-use technologies for defence purposes, the MOD can maximise innovation while delivering value for taxpayers. Furthermore, by involving more SMEs, we can manufacture critical components locally, reducing security risks associated with reliance on non-NATO or non-European allied suppliers. That approach also spreads the economic benefits, stimulating regional economies, creating jobs and fostering innovation.

Defence contracts provide stable revenue streams, enabling SMEs to invest, scale up and contribute more broadly to the economy. The previous Conservative Government let small businesses down. They created chaos and uncertainty when businesses needed certainty and stability, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. Liberal Democrats are fighting for a fair deal for SMEs, starting with overhauling the unfair business rates system and providing more support with energy costs.

The current state of SME participation in MOD procurement is underwhelming. Only around 5% of the procurement budget is allocated to SMEs; 42% of contracts go to the same 10 suppliers. That is simply not good enough and we can do better. We welcome the announcement of a new defence industrial strategy, and we hope it is completed swiftly so that businesses can plan. I especially welcome that one of the six priorities of the strategy is to prioritise UK businesses, and another involves fostering a more diverse community of suppliers, including non-traditional SMEs. We will hold the Government to account on sticking to those priorities.

Ultimately, I want to see the strategy turn into meaningful action. SMEs need simpler access to contracts and reduced bureaucracy, including help to overcome defence-related banking challenges and support to compete on a level playing field with the largest suppliers. It is time for the Government to unlock the potential of SMEs to fuel local economies, increase the UK’s defence sovereignty and lead on innovative technologies.

17:20

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) on securing an excellent and very timely debate. If I may say so, as someone who ran an SME, was involved in public procurement, and was Minister for Defence Procurement, this is a subject that gets my pulse racing. Perhaps I am an anorak, but it certainly does—particularly considering the changing nature of warfare and its extraordinary impact on procurement, which he rightly mentioned. Of course, we are talking about Ukraine.

There has been much criticism of procurement in recent years, and the Minister for the Armed Forces was pretty damning yesterday, but I am incredibly proud of what we did in government, uniquely in the world, in standing by Ukraine. That was one of the greatest procurement achievements in our country’s recent history. We shipped out there the NLAW—made in Belfast, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned —despite legal advice to the Government that we should not. Ben Wallace took the risk, with the full support of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and we stood by Ukraine. If we had not, it may have capitulated, which would have been terrible for world peace.

That reminds us of the ethical importance of supporting the defence sector. Peace is the No. 1 ethical goal of the UN, but to have peace we need defence, and for that we need a thriving defence sector. Too often, we hear an ESG—environmental, social and governance—narrative that we should not invest in defence. As I understand it—it was in The Times—20 defence companies have either been advised against attending careers fairs because of safety fears or decided to cancel under pressure, which is shocking.

I have two specific questions for the Minister on ESG. Can she confirm that, in reviving the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, the Government will seek to strengthen how protest against defence companies is dealt with on campus? The Chancellor mentioned in a speech yesterday the importance of opening up investment in the UK from our pension funds. She is 100% correct about that, but can the Minister confirm that we will be clear to those pension funds that investing in defence is ethically positive because it helps support the security of our country and the wider world?

Let me make a couple of economic points. When we talk about investment, we must understand the importance of laying out the pathway to 2.5% quickly. ADS, the trade body for SMEs in defence, is worried about the procurement freeze, tightening—whatever we want to call it—in the MOD, which is undoubtedly happening, and its impact on cash flow and confidence among defence SMEs, at a time when they are facing higher tax costs, regulations and so on. I hope that the Government can bring forward the pathway to give businesses the confidence to keep investing in the defence sector.

Equally, there is much to be positive about. The hon. Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor was absolutely right to say that because war is changing, procurement needs to change, and SMEs must play a huge part in that. There are some features of the integrated procurement model I announced that I think are particularly important. One is export. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) mentioned the Jackal, and he mentioned the Czech Republic, where I made my first ever trade visit. The Jackal was proudly on display, and I sincerely hope that that deal is successfully concluded. That underlines how, to support the defence sector, we need international market success, because our market is not big enough to support our defence sector.

Perhaps the most important point, which several colleagues referred to, is accessibility for SMEs. They can feel that it is difficult to penetrate the defence procurement system. As Minister, I spoke many times about the most uplifting experience I had in procurement, which was visiting an SME that had developed a drone that was being used in Ukraine. That is obviously very sensitive, but I can say that it had cutting-edge capability. When I was there, that SMEs was getting feedback within hours. To get that, there has to be access, at a secure level, to frontline data, so we wanted to develop far more engagement with defence SMEs at “Secret”. I strongly recommend to the Minister continuing to create that feedback loop between industry and Government, so that SMEs know what is happening.

Finally, on dual use, I was determined to recognise—if I had had more time in government, perhaps I would have got further with this—that there are so many brilliant companies in our economy that probably do not think about getting involved in defence. We need to fire up that talent base and get them involved in defence procurement, particularly in areas such as software, because that is what will drive procurement going forward. If we get the funding in place, back our defence companies and send the signal that investing in defence is morally right because of the threats we face, then we can look forward to a bright future for our defence companies.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

We have gained a few minutes. I ask the Minister to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the proposer of the debate to wind up.

17:25

[The Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry (Maria Eagle)]

I will certainly do that, Mr Stringer. This debate has been excellent, and it is good to see so many colleagues in the Chamber to participate, even if they could not make the length of speech that perhaps they had hoped. None the less, everybody was able to get the nub of what they wanted to say into the debate. For that we have my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) to thank, because it is he who secured the debate; I congratulate him on it. I welcome this debate on the involvement of SMEs in defence procurement because this is an issue, as my hon. Friend and many others have said, that is of critical importance to the future of our military and to our capacity to deter potential adversaries.

We all know that Britain faces acute and growing dangers—conflict in the middle east, the war in Ukraine and tensions in the Indo-Pacific—and we also know that our armed forces have been underfunded and hollowed out over the last number of years, which is why we are having a root-and-branch strategic defence review to assess these threats and develop the capabilities we need to counter them. It is why we are boosting spending this year by just under £3 billion in real terms, and why we are going to set out a pathway to 2.5% of GDP on defence. I am not going to repeat everything that was said in the House yesterday on this, but I realise that it is a matter that everybody across the House is concerned about.

Our armed forces are only as strong as the industry and procurement system that supports and equips them. The procurement system itself was described during the last Parliament by the Public Accounts Committee as “broken”. It is clear that changes need to be made. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor set out some of what he wants to see, including the ability to respond more swiftly to the changing face of warfare. A number of Members, including the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), have set out some of what they have seen, during their time in this place, of that effort being achieved, particularly in respect of the support we have been giving over the past few years to Ukraine. There is nothing like an emergency situation like that to ensure that we innovate. It is important that we learn the lessons of that innovation for our procurement more generally.

I am particularly concerned, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor, to get SMEs more involved in our procurement processes. He made a number of suggestions, as did other Members around Westminster Hall, of how we might be able to do that. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) mentioned Supacat, which I saw last week at the international armoured vehicles conference. Everything he said about Supacat is correct. It is an excellent example, and the hon. Gentleman was able to provide the Chamber with numbers in relation to jobs and the improved economic growth in his area that it is able to provide. That is precisely the kind of thing that we want the new defence industrial strategy, when it is published, to be able to pursue and do better with.

The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) said rightly that MOD spend in Northern Ireland is less than in some regions of England, and he quoted some numbers. He is quite right, but there is no indication that SMEs over there have less ability to innovate or to provide services of the type that the MOD needs. I hope to be able to do precisely what he asks and increase that number. I will be visiting in due course, not too far in the future, and I hope to hear from some of the SMEs that he and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—who is, unusually, no longer in his place—talked about.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) talked about the Teesside defence and innovation cluster and some of the companies in his constituency. He is right: I promised him a visit—I think we are trying to organise it now. When I am considering which proposals to take forward in the defence industrial strategy, before it is published, it is tremendously helpful to hear directly from SMEs about their experience. I have already done some of that and, between now and the end of the consultation, I will be doing as much, in as many regions, as I possibly can, in all of our nations around the UK. I hope to be in a position to get a good sense of the big issues that smaller companies are raising with us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) was passionate in making his points about late payment; this is not the first time that he has raised that issue in parliamentary settings. The Government do recognise the importance of fair payment practices. Direct suppliers to the MOD are required to sign up to the prompt payment code to be eligible for MOD contracts. The Director General Commercial recently wrote to large suppliers to remind them of that responsibility because some are better at complying than others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth Moor View (Fred Thomas) argued, “Let us not decide that all defence primes are evil”—I think that is the word he used. I thought that was going a bit far, but his point was that they are not the enemy; they can be part of the solution. There are examples of good practice, where primes have been very clear about involving small, innovative, agile companies. There are some examples that are not so good, and we need to improve the way in which small firms engage with MOD contracts, whether directly or through contracting with a prime on a particular programme.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) asked me to visit. I think I have offered to visit absolutely everybody else in Westminster Hall, so it would be churlish of me to say no to him. I cannot promise to visit before the end of February, but I can promise to come and see some of what his constituency has to offer. It obviously has a long history of engineering and of working hard in tough industries. I look forward to that visit. He mentioned that he is visiting a firm that supplies products across domains, and it sounds like he will have an interesting time.

I look forward also to dealing with the points made by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire). I was glad to hear her say that she is in favour of a comprehensive industrial strategy because the defence industrial strategy that we are going to bring forward is part of a thorough, countrywide industrial strategy for all Departments. She will recall that that strategy identified defence as one of the eight growth sectors on which we ought to rely to improve economic growth and spread prosperity across the nations and regions—and that is what we want to do. In fact, the defence industrial strategy that we will bring forward will act as the sector action plan for that broader strategy, so we will be joining up.

The hon. Member for South Suffolk raised the issue of protest-related activity on university campuses and what that means for the ability of defence companies to recruit the best talent. This Government recognise the crucial importance of attracting new entrants to the defence sector. Obviously, university campuses provide a way of engaging with young people who might want to work for existing companies or set up their own and get involved in the defence sector. We do need to do that. We are working closely with the Department for Education and with Skills England to address the skills landscape in the defence sector. Part of that is about making sure that young people at educational institutions such as universities can get the full range of information, at university careers fairs and so on. I hope that between all of us we can make an improvement, to the extent that there is a problem that was identified by The Times.

[James Cartlidge]

I think what everyone wants to see from the defence sector is that we champion the ethical value of investing in defence because it delivers security, and in doing so challenge those who protest as if these companies were somehow out there to harm us.

[Maria Eagle]

I agree with that and I think there would not be too much disagreement across the House of Commons about that. I think it is something we can agree on, and that we should try to get that sense out there. Increasingly, as people see the increasingly dangerous world we are living in, there is the capacity for any concerns that there might have been about defence in the past to be seen properly in context, and for it to be seen that actually, defence is a key part of our ability to continue with our way of life as we choose in a democracy.

I have a couple of minutes left before I hand over again to my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor. It has been an excellent debate. In many ways we have not had enough time to get through all the contributions that colleagues around Westminster Hall would have wanted to make, but as I go about trying to deal with our defence industrial strategy, it is helpful for me to hear from colleagues, just as it is helpful for me to get around the country as much as I can to listen directly to SMEs. It helps make sure that the policy prescriptions we come out with in the defence industrial strategy are the right ones; that we can change procurement in a way that will assist SMEs to have full involvement as they wish in defence procurement; and that we can spread prosperity and economic growth across all our regions in England and all the nations of the UK. That is the prize in front of us, and that is what we can do if we get this right.

17:37

[Alan Strickland]

I thank the Minister for her strong leadership on this vital issue. We have discussed these matters on a number of occasions and I know the Minister is committed to really driving this priority through the defence industrial strategy and the wider strategic defence review, which I strongly welcome.

I also thank hon. Members around Westminster Hall for what I think has been a strong shared sense of purpose about the importance of tapping in to our innovative small businesses to meet the challenges we face. We have heard about the real pride in defence contractors around the country from the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer). We have heard of the importance of ensuring that economic growth across the country is driven by the defence industry from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister). We have also heard really important points about payments from the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans). I thank the Minister and everybody who has taken part today.

We have all acknowledged that the global threat is growing, becoming more complex and evolving much more quickly. There has been broad agreement that part of the answer is ensuring that we can open up more opportunities to small, nimble, agile high-tech SMEs across the United Kingdom which can be at the forefront of helping us and our allies to meet this challenge.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered SME participation in defence procurement.

17:39

Sitting adjourned.