Farming and Inheritance Tax

Debate between James Murray and John Glen

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

To address the right hon. Gentleman’s point, we recognise that agricultural and business property relief play an important role in supporting family farms, but the full unlimited exemption from inheritance tax has simply become unsustainable. The four most recent years-worth of data make clear why. The data shows that a very small number of agricultural property relief claimants, including those who claim business property relief too, benefited from a very significant amount of relief. In total, 47% of the Exchequer cost of the relief went to the top 7% of claims. To be clear what that means, I will put it another way. For every 14 or so estates, the top one among them claimed half the total relief.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Let me tell the Minister what concerns me most. There has not been an impact assessment, but if the major driver for the Government, whether we accept it or not, was to raise some money from this source, why were other more effective mechanisms not used, such as business roll-over relief, where a business could be sold in another context and rolled over into buying the land, deferring capital gains tax? If that mechanism had been used, the money would have been taken from much wealthier people who were not actually producing food in the first place. Now, we are capturing a massive proportion of small family farms completely unnecessarily, because due consideration of better alternatives was not done by the Minister.

[James Murray]

I reassure the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a lot of respect personally, that we carefully considered how to calibrate the policy to ensure that significant relief from inheritance tax is still available to family farms, while at the same time fixing the public finances in as fair a way as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Murray]

I have confidence in the way in which we have calibrated the policy. As I said to the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), it has balanced the need to retain significant, generous provision of inheritance tax relief for family farms with ensuring that, at the same time, we fix the public finances in the fairest way possible.

[John Glen]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. In view of the point that has just been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), will he not consider, at the very least, looking at some dispensation for farmers above a certain age, given the lack of time that they will have to plan for this intervention? The truth is that someone who is near retirement age will be faced with the prospect of 10 years of all their projected profits being eaten up by this tax, which will mean that the farm cannot go to the next generation. The hon. Gentleman must surely look at some mitigations to deal with that reality for so many farmers who are concentrated in that older age group.

[James Murray]

We know that individual circumstances will vary. Any individual who is concerned about their specific tax liability should obviously consult an accountant or financial adviser. We would not know, from a thumbnail sketch, whether that person had any inherited nil rate bands, what their liabilities were, what decisions they had made about gifting, and so on. A huge number of factors will play into this, and it is right for individuals to seek specific advice. Things that are said in this Chamber may be creating undue anxiety, when people should be looking into the detail.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Murray and John Glen

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the war in Ukraine continues, we must not let up for a second on efforts to tighten the net on the accomplices and beneficiaries of Putin’s regime. We welcome the direction of the measures announced yesterday. Can the Minister confirm whether those measures will close all the loopholes and specifically the ownership thresholds, which Russian oligarchs and their enablers have been able to exploit to evade the bite of sanctions?

[John Glen]

The Government will be relentless in their pursuit of illicit assets. As I said, we have sanctioned 24 banks with global assets of over £940 billion and 120 elites with a combined worth of £140 billion. Working closely with our allies, we have incrementally and sequentially tightened that net and immobilised more than 60% of Putin’s war chest of foreign reserves worth £275 billion. We continue to work closely with our allies to intensify those measures as opportunities arise.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Murray and John Glen

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

My hon. Friend knows a lot about this matter and the industry, and I take her concerns very seriously. Although the Government will never insist on individual lending decisions and behaviours of banks, we will engage closely. I will meet her, and the Association of Brokers and Yacht Agents, and I will write to UK Finance to ensure that the guidance that is posted is being used effectively in the circumstances that she has raised.

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Pandora papers show how overseas shell companies secretly buy up luxury property in the UK. In 2018, the Government published draft legislation for a new register of such entities to crack down on the use of UK property for money laundering. This is a matter of law and order. Ministers promised to deliver that register in 2021, yet for some reason, since the current Prime Minister took office, that commitment seems to have been abandoned. Will the Minister now, four years since the UK anti-corruption strategy was published, finally admit that the promise of delivering a register in 2021 has been broken, and will he give us a firm date by which the register will be in place?

[John Glen]

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the financial action taskforce report in December 2018 that gave the UK the best ever evaluation in terms of anti-money laundering. There are two or three areas where we have taken action.

[James Murray]

Where is the register?

[John Glen]

The hon. Member keeps asking “Where is the register?” I will answer the question in a moment. What the Government have done is put in an additional £63 million in the last Budget to deal with Companies House reform, which is one of the areas. We have been the world’s leader in terms of common reporting standards. We were the first country, five years ago, to raise the standard in terms of transparency. We will implement that register when legislative time becomes available.