Farming and Inheritance Tax
Alison Hume Excerpts(2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Victoria Atkins
In a moment.
Since the Budget, the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers has analysed the family farm tax and applied tax law and the realities of modern-day farming to it. Its analysis has revealed that up to 75,000 individual owners of farming businesses could be affected over the coming generation, even before inflation, which is the equivalent of five times the Government’s figure of 500 farms affected in 2026-27. How could they have got this so wrong? It is because this city-dwelling Chancellor, Secretary of State and Exchequer Secretary do not understand modern farming or the countryside that they have overlooked a major area of tax policy and forgotten to consider thousands of farmers.
As the Exchequer Secretary has confirmed, the Government forgot to include one of the three routes to the relief in their calculations. They have not included business property relief-only claims in their figures, which means that as many as 14,000 tenant farmers who cannot claim agricultural property relief because they do not own the land on which they farm are absent from their calculations. What is worse is that Ministers do not know how many farmers are affected by that.
The city-dwelling Chancellor and Secretary of State have also forgotten about the farmers who in years gone by followed professional advice and transferred their farms into companies or partnerships. Those farmers will claim only BPR, so they have been left out of the calculations. Again, Ministers do not know how many farmers are in that position.
Victoria Atkins
I will in a minute.
I am told by advisers that some farmers choose to use BPR only because it is easier in probate. Guess what? Yet again, Ministers do not know how many farms are in that position, and they have not been included.
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and then to the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume). I have so much more to say.
Alison Hume
The right hon. Member left a trail of destruction across the Government. She was the Health Secretary who broke the NHS, the Prisons Minister who ran out of prison places and the Treasury Minister who crashed the economy—no wonder her constituency majority crashed from 28,000 to 5,000. [Interruption.] Does she not think it is time to apologise and for once to support the Government, who are bringing back stability to the British economy and farmers’ profitability?
Mr Speaker
Order. I know that Members are jeering about reading. I know that when I came to the House it was a rule that you should not read, but both sides are doing it. Remember that.