Agricultural Property Relief

Aphra Brandreth Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very passionate speech on an extremely important topic. She will know that my constituency of Chester South and Eddisbury borders Wales, and that there are many family farmers in north Wales who are deeply concerned about the consequences of this policy. Does she agree that it will impact not only farmers but the wider agricultural-industrial community, including businesses in my constituency that work alongside Welsh farmers in north Wales, such as Meadow Foods in Chester?

[Ann Davies]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, and perhaps I should mention that Meadow Foods is the company that takes the milk from our farm—so we are that close to one another. I will say more about that issue as I move through my speech.

The lack of any data on the particular effects of the changes in Wales is a genuine problem. The available data, especially the data used by the Treasury, is a combination of Wales data and England data, or is UK-level data; it is not Welsh data. That is why organisations in Wales have to make their own calculations about the impact in Wales. The Country Land and Business Association calculated that an average 250-acre dairy farm in Wales could be hit by a £119,000 inheritance tax charge, while the average 250-acre livestock farm would expect an £85,000 charge. However, those figures do not include the asset value of diversified enterprise, meaning, of course, that they could be higher still.

It is crucial that farmers, policymakers and other stakeholders in Wales have accurate data to understand the real impacts of the changes within the specific context of Wales. The FUW called for the Wales-specific impact assessment to be modelled with working farms only, as the Welsh Government—the Welsh Labour Government—did during their 2023 sustainable farming scheme analysis. Today, I reiterate the call for the Government to implement that assessment, as my Plaid Cymru colleagues and I have continuously called for since October. The arguments have not changed.

There is evidence that the changes will not make even an iota of difference to the Treasury. In fact, modelling from the Confederation of British Industry Economics found that the changes to BPR will actually cost the Exchequer £1.25 billion between 2026-27 and 2029-30. It is unclear how they work towards Labour’s mission of growth, as industry organisations have come across numerous cases of farms and businesses delaying investments, putting orders on hold and preparing to reduce staffing. Let us not forget that each £1 a farmer spends generates another £9 in that community. What other rural industry does that?

Undermining local farmers and agricultural producers risks missing out on crucial opportunities to shorten our supply chains and to improve our food resilience. We currently produce 60% of the food that we need here in the UK and, when our food imports already outnumber exports by £33.2 billion, causing a reduction in the food that we produce will only increase our vulnerability to factors outside our control—the damaging consequences of which we have already felt in the energy market.

There is also a consensus that the changes do not address the initial concerns about non-farmers investing in land to avoid inheritance tax. For those with new money from capital gains made in the non-agricultural economy, there will continue to be a huge incentive to buy agricultural land, given that the value of that land above the announced threshold will face inheritance tax charges at half the rate of other assets.