Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

The Government have announced these changes after listening carefully to feedback from the farming community and family businesses, and I am pleased that the National Farmers’ Union and others have welcomed the changes. Even after the reforms, the Government expect to raise around £300 million in 2029-30 from our changes to these tax reliefs. We are making fair and responsible choices to support the farming community, with a record £11.8 billion investment in sustainable farming and food production over this Parliament, and to modernise our tax system for the future”.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, the Government quietly announced over Christmas that the agricultural and business property reliefs threshold would increase from £1 million to £2.5 million. That change is welcome but it is plainly a U-turn, following well over a year of pressure from farmers, other family businesses and the Conservative Benches. First, does the Minister accept that this cruel delay caused unnecessary anxiety and real distress for the farming community and those operating family businesses across the country? Secondly, given that the harm was clear and the opposition sustained, why did the Government wait so long to act, which maximised the damage as families took important and irreversible decisions?

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. May I first take this opportunity to wish her a belated happy birthday for the weekend just past?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support for the measures that we announced shortly before Christmas. It is absolutely right that, following the reforms to the reliefs that we announced in the Budget in 2024, the Government consulted about the reforms with the farming community, as she says, and with family businesses. We have now carefully considered this feedback and have acted, and that was the right thing to do. We have acted to protect more family farms and family-owned businesses, while maintaining a core principle that more valuable agricultural and business assets should make a greater contribution.