Farming Families

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for bringing the House’s attention to this issue today and for her powerful speech. I declare at the outset that I am the owner of a smallholding of farmland in Devon. I am not going to cover the IHT issue; I will leave that to others in this distinguished company with much greater knowledge than I have. However, I listened carefully to the noble Baroness’s powerful speech and look forward to the Minister’s detailed response to her specific questions.

I am certainly not an agricultural expert, but I have great admiration for those who have farmed land for generations and a strong belief that a thriving farming sector lies at the heart of prospering rural communities. We are very fortunate in the UK in having farms run by families for generations. They have immeasurable expertise in understanding what works and what does not for their land. They are prepared to make a total commitment to the management of their enterprises, their stock, their ground and the habitats it contains in what is, as we must recognise, particularly in the hill-farming world, a tough, demanding and often dangerous vocation.

Farmers also have a very deep and multi-generational commitment to the environment, and tend to take a very long-term view of maintaining and enhancing the quality of the land and the habitat that they manage. However, we should not take them for granted, and this is a very delicate balance which should be preserved.

We have heard that farming is a highly capital-intensive activity that typically generates a very low return on capital employed and a relatively high risk, given the volatility of commodity prices and, of course, the vagary of the weather. It is, therefore, a very long-cycle business. What is required is a stable and settled regulatory and financial settlement, against which long-term investment decisions can be taken. That requires an unambiguous agricultural policy with very clear objectives against which a regulatory settlement can be developed. There was extraordinary frustration even before the Budget that this really was not the case. That is not a party-political view, given the total lack of clarity that the previous Administration provided in the post-Brexit subsidy settlement.

Food production goals must be put front and centre of a regulatory system. It is far too complex to be understood, but clearly many small businesses do not have the resources to drill down to truly understand the regulatory and financial environment. There is an overall concern that farmers’ voices are not being given sufficient weight in the development of agricultural policy. I look forward to the Government’s response.