Small Farms and Family Businesses

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, for bringing this timely debate. Let us not beat about the hedgerow: the Government’s Budget proposals are bringing huge stress and deep concern to the farming community, as we have already heard. For many, this is the final straw after years of challenges.

I have become aware of a particularly tragic circumstance in south Norfolk where, due to a terminal cancer diagnosis, if the farmer survives after 5 April 2026, the policy change will have a huge impact on his family’s well-being and fortunes. That pressure puts enormous strain on him, almost wishing him to die sooner, because then the farm will be safe.

What of situations of the unexpected sudden death of a young farmer? The family would not only have lost the primary breadwinner but would probably have an unsustainable farm to carry on farming.

For others considering a lifetime gift, I am hearing deep concerns about the fact that you need to be able to afford to make it. The challenge is what you are going to live off or where you are going to live, because farming businesses have been squeezed in so many ways. In many cases, there is simply not the spare cash available outside funding capital, machinery and living costs.

All of this is affecting the well-being and mental health of our farming communities. The suicide rate among male farmers is three times the national average. Thank goodness, at a time like this, with added worries and pressures, that we have organisations such as the Farming Community Network and the excellent YANA charity in Norfolk ready to provide a listening ear and practical advice.

It is not just farming finances: there are wider implications of this policy change. If small farms have to be broken up or are no longer viable, there is a major risk of multinationals buying up family farms. That is likely to negatively impact the 30 by 30 biodiversity target, as research shows that smaller farms tend to have higher biodiversity.

A second impact, which I am sure the Government will be concerned about, is around community cohesion. Farming families have played, and continue to play, an important and valuable part as community leaders, volunteering in their neighbourhoods as local councillors and churchwardens, and running agricultural and county shows. Fewer farms, fewer people.

So let me dare to ask the Minister whether he will pledge to do two things. The first is simply to raise the threshold on APR. The Treasury’s own figures estimate that a substantial amount of the money raised through these reforms will come from the wealthiest 2% of farm estates. Raising the threshold will not make a great deal of difference in terms of tax revenue. Secondly, please tweak the rules around tax-free gifts made in the seven years before death and exempt people over a certain age, so that farm owners who die in the next seven years have an opportunity to make tax-avoiding gifts in light of the Budget changes. This seems to be eminently sensible and compassionate.

Wendell Berry, the American poet, essayist and farmer, has reflected that the agricultural economy has almost always, from the earliest times, been slanted against the primary producers, the real risk takers, the real workers. Our farming families feed our nation. They provide nature benefits. They contribute to the warp and weft of community life. We need them. We owe them a fair system. I urge the Minister to choose a positive way forward.