Small Farms and Family Businesses

Lord Douglas-Miller Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Leicester for bringing forward this important debate. I declare my farming interests, as set out in the register.

The lack of any engagement or consultation with those impacted by the Chancellor’s APR and BPR Budget announcement leads to the conclusion that the Treasury either does not value the opinion of those it has impacted, or that it understood the impact and simply does not care. I am not sure which is worse.

I sense that the Minister is on unfamiliar ground when dealing with the detail of family farms and farming matters generally. I notice that, with one single exception, he is not overwhelmingly supported by his Back-Benchers today. So I hope that today’s debate will help the Minister to understand why farmers and small family businesses the length and breadth of the country are so angry. They are angry because they feel that they have been lied to and deceived by this Labour Government.

The Prime Minister said that he understood farming and promised not to interfere with APR and BPR—and yet he has. The Chancellor said that Labour’s new tax will impact only very few, but this is not true. Both the NFU’s and Defra’s own statistics contradict the Treasury estimates, and I suspect that they have a much better understanding of this matter.

The Secretary of State for Defra has insulted farmers by saying, “Look at the small print; you’ll all be fine”. Well, they have, and it is not fine. There are numerous reasons why removing APR and BPR constitutes a disaster for farming and the business community. Many of these reasons have been articulated in the press by the NFU, the farming community and small businesses across the country, and by noble Lords in this debate.

Clearly, the Government have misunderstood both the scale and impact of reducing APR and BPR and, most importantly, the consequences of this disastrous new tax for working farmers and small businesses. By taxing farmers and small businesses so that they are unable to pass on their farms or businesses to future generations of their family, this Government are striking at the very heart of our rural communities.

Not only will it rapidly accelerate the disintegration of family farms and businesses and the subsequent speeding up of the corporate ownership of our countryside; it puts at risk the very fragile web that holds our rural communities together. The obvious and most widely understood casualties will be reduced measures to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss, the loss of public access to the countryside and, critically, reduced UK food security. These are really important points—in addition to the numerous small businesses that will simply close or reduce in scale and profitability.

There are other more subtle but equally disruptive outcomes: the unravelling of rural schools; village shops closing; fewer farmers’ markets and less local produce; fewer varieties of heritage crops and livestock; and the loss of key skills such as drystone walling, fencing and hedge laying. Crucially, as has been mentioned many times in this debate, it will impact farmers’ mental health and well-being, which has been a growing area of concern for some time.

If the Minister now understands why these changes have caused so much anguish to so many farmers, can he tell us why there was no consultation in advance of their being announced and explain what additional support the Government can offer to those who are struggling to make sense of them?

Finally, can the Minister give us a proper explanation for this devastating attack on working farmers and small businesses, and not regurgitate the rather tired £22 billion black hole excuse or parrot that there are a few rich people who were getting away with it? Punishing a critical sector of our society and disabling our rural economy deserves a more thorough explanation than this soundbite.