Farming and Inheritance Tax
Debate between Tim Farron and Pete Wishart(3 weeks ago)
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Tim Farron
That is nonsense. Wherever Liberal Democrats are in control, we back and support our farmers and are proud to do so.
Talk is cheap, and most people in this House will at some time quite rightly have uttered the sentiment that British farmers are the best in the world, without actually understanding why. It is true that they really are the best in the world, and that is because the way in which our farming economy is structured is based on the family farm. Family farming makes a difference because it has close husbandry, higher environmental standards, higher welfare standards and better quality produce. It is not an accident that British farming is the best in the world.
Pete Wishart
Does the hon. Gentleman think that the difficulty with the Labour party is that it just does not understand farmers, because they do not fit neatly into its clumsy definition of what a working person is? These are people who work 12 hours a day, outside in the toughest environment, and who work into their old age, but they do not get into the Labour club.
Tim Farron
There is something in that, and I will come to that in a moment when I talk about poverty in our countryside, when it just does not look the way people in urban communities think it ought to look.
There is no doubt that family farms are under attack, but this did not start on 4 July, and I want to go through why we have ended up where we are now. The botched transition from the old farm payment scheme to the new one is the principal source of hardship among our farmers. Let us start with the fact that the environmental land management scheme—ELMS—budget saw a £350 million underspend under the last Government, and that was not an accident. It was blindingly obvious that that was going to happen. One hill farmer I spoke to just last month told me that, as a consequence of the transition, he will lose £40,000 a year in basic payment. To replace it, he will gain £14,000 under the sustainable farming incentive. By the way, it cost him £6,000 to go through a land agent in order to get in in the first place.