Claire Young
Main Page: Claire Young (Liberal Democrat - Thornbury and Yate)Department Debates - View all Claire Young's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. Dwight Eisenhower said that
“farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”
Too often, this Government appear to be a thousand miles away from the cornfield. I urge them to review their changes to the agricultural property relief, listen to farmers and put their needs and the best interests of this country front and centre.
This subject has aroused strong emotions in my South Cotswolds constituency, where we have both ends of the spectrum, from the many small family farms to Dyson’s UK headquarters. Our 750 farm holdings employ more than 2,000 people—including Mike, who is in the Public Gallery today—who all demonstrably contribute to feeding our country and caring for our natural environment. These farmers are distraught. As we seek to reverse the destruction of nature in our severely nature-depleted country, it is clear that we need the participation of the sector that manages 70% of our land.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
A small farmer with a farm near Frampton Cotterell, in my Thornbury and Yate constituency, highlighted the fact that, as well as high land costs, some of the machinery needed to farm that land costs upwards of £100,000. Does my hon. Friend agree that for farmers to have the confidence to invest in the modern, sustainable farming practices that are needed, we need a policy that recognises the high-capital, low-income nature of farming?
Dr Savage
I thank my hon. Friend for a good point well made.
From waking up before the crack of dawn in the lambing and calving seasons, to often finishing the working day beyond midnight during the harvest, it is not hard to recognise the long and draining hours that farmers put in, the huge financial pressures that they work under and the toll that the lifestyle takes on their mental and physical health.
Farmers have to be able to plan for the long term, with their meteorological, financial, logistical and agricultural predictions having impacts for generations to come. Being such forward planners, and having been promised by the current Government when in opposition that there would be no change to APR, it came as a great and not pleasant surprise in Labour’s autumn 2024 Budget to hear that they would indeed be subjected to a change in inheritance tax. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) for his point earlier about the injustice of retrospective legislation.