Farming and Inheritance Tax

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady sincerely for raising that point, because she has—perhaps unwittingly—identified a contradiction in DEFRA’s own claims. It talks about a £300 million underspend, but last week it was cancelling the very capital grants that farmers around the country have been investing in, saying that it had run out of money. Well, it cannot be both. Perhaps that is yet another example of the cockeyed accounting of the Chancellor and the Environment Secretary.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that what is quite frightening about this policy is that perhaps the Government know exactly what they are doing, and that, a bit like “Animal Farm”, they think everything should be collectivised?

[Victoria Atkins]

My right hon. Friend, who has a wonderful way with words, asks a question that many members of rural communities up and down the United Kingdom are asking themselves. In fact, when the Prime Minister did regional media a couple of weeks ago, Sean Dunderdale, the wonderful presenter on BBC Radio Lincolnshire, asked him what he had got against the people of Lincolnshire. I might ask: what have this Labour Government got against the countryside?