Farming and Inheritance Tax

Baggy Shanker Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend and Lincolnshire neighbour sets out exactly the personal impact of the tax. I know how Treasury Ministers look at spreadsheets and those terribly impressive packs of information from civil servants. [Interruption.] I remind Government Members that this is deeply serious; it is not a joke. I also know that Chancellor after Chancellor has looked at the figures and come to the conclusion that this is a political decision. The current Chancellor has got it wrong.

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The shadow Secretary of State made an important point about the health and wellbeing of our farmers. As operation waiting times were almost three times higher when she was Health Secretary than they were in 2010, does she not welcome the investment that this Government are putting into our NHS? [Interruption.]

[Victoria Atkins]

Do not worry; I will deal with that. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the important issue of mental health in farming across the national health service. I was proud to work, as a Member of Parliament and as Secretary of State for Health, to massively increase investment in mental health services. If he is a rural MP, I am sure that he will know how isolated farmers can be and the pressures on their emotions at the best of times—they have the weather, diseases and crop cycles to contend with. This pressure merely adds to that, as we have already heard from farmers who have contacted me.

I also gently remind the hon. Gentleman that the family farm tax—or tax on tragedy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) called it so bleakly—will raise £500 million in 2026-27. According to the King’s Fund, that is equivalent to about a day’s worth of services in the NHS in England. It will not be quite the game changer that some in the hon. Gentleman’s party believe it to be.

What about the family in the south-west whose beloved father died a decade ago in tragic circumstances, leaving three young children who are now in their teens? The mother has run the farm and brought up their children in the midst of their grief. She has now been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness at the age of 50. Two of the children want to carry on the farm when they reach 18 but, should the unthinkable happen and they lose their mum, they will be saddled with Labour’s family farm tax of £700,000. What empathetic and meaningful response does the Secretary of State, who is not in his place—where is he?—or the Treasury Minister have for that family? They will be watching and listening.

We took the unusual step of giving lots of notice to Labour MPs that we would debate Labour’s family farm tax today. We did that because we wanted to give Labour MPs in rural seats time to reflect and consider whether they can continue to support this vindictive tax. For example, a Welsh landowner told me that he will have to sell six tenanted farms to pay Labour’s family farm tax. That is six farming families—who we on the Opposition Benches would describe as working people—who will lose their businesses, their family homes and their children’s farming futures. Those six farming families have been forgotten by this Government.

The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) has called on the Treasury to produce its modelling on the impact on family farms. Will the Treasury do that, at the Back Bencher’s request? How will he vote today? The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) met farmers earlier this month and claimed that she would take their concerns back to Westminster. Will she raise those today and vote against this tax?