Ellie Chowns
Main Page: Ellie Chowns (Green Party - North Herefordshire)Department Debates - View all Ellie Chowns's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 18 hours ago)
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Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I rise to represent North Herefordshire, where this is an issue of huge concern. Some 914 people in my constituency have signed the petition; I think it is the second highest number of signatories in a constituency. I know that there is a great deal of concern because I hear it from farmers in my surgeries, and I have met dozens of them here in Parliament. I have heard from them loud and clear just how much anxiety and distress this policy is causing, so I want to represent their voices.
I feel that the way the policy has been introduced is deeply regrettable, not only because it has caused such huge distress to the farming community—we are all aware of the mental health challenges that those in the community face anyway, and this has made it worse—but because it hugely undermines the much more positive and constructive conversations that Government and farmers desperately need to have in order to face the challenges of food production, job generation, tackling climate change and protecting biodiversity. Those are areas where farmers and Government need to work hand in hand for the long term, but all of that has been blown up in the air by the way the policy has been introduced—it is super frustrating.
In his introductory speech, the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) spoke about the need to consider complexity and offer solutions, and I agree. I feel that we should be doing that in politics all the time—not just tossing insults at one another across the Chamber, but really working to grapple with this issue. In that spirit, if we are talking about addressing and understanding the complexity, we desperately need a set of figures that we can use as a common basis for discussion. We still have Government saying one thing and farmers saying another. Indeed, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board recently said that 76% of farmers will be affected. When will we get some statistics and modelling that we can agree with as a basis for understanding the impact? [Interruption.] Sorry, I will not give way because of the demands on time.
Several solutions have been raised today, such as reviewing the thresholds and the rates. As many have referred to, farmers recognise the problem of the use of land as a tax loophole, but this policy does not plug that gap properly. We should think about the thresholds and their impact on farming. Perhaps we also need to address the issues facing older farmers—those over 75 who have not had any opportunity to engage in tax planning. But fundamentally, we have to fix the problem of farming being insufficiently profit-making to enable people to secure their livelihoods long term. That has got to be the focus of Government policy.