Farming and Inheritance Tax
Debate between Joe Morris and James Cleverly(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
It is always a privilege to speak on behalf of my constituency, which is the largest in England and one of the most rural. I start by paying tribute to the farmers I have engaged with, both as a Labour candidate—I had my selection meeting at a Hexham farmers market—and since I have been elected, whether in London, on their individual farms, through the NFU or otherwise. have had genuinely balanced and informative conversations about them, and I have shared the outcomes of those conversations with Ministers and through the appropriate channels. What really strikes me is that this is an unserious motion brought by an unserious party; one that fails to understand the countryside and fails to understand why it lost seats that it had held—in the case of Hexham, for 100 years. The Conservative party undermined the confidence of young people to remain in the communities where they grew up, and it cried foul at any attempt to provide housing in my local community.
I spent this morning meeting with Hexham Community Partnership to talk about the appalling overcrowding in Hexham and the need for genuinely affordable housing. The problem is having a devastating effect, forcing people out of the towns they grew up in. The Conservatives had oversight of that in my part of the world for 100 years. They need to look in the mirror and genuinely consider why rural communities turned against them so much.
Joe Morris
I will. The vast expanse of green on the Opposition Benches reminds me of the British countryside.
Mr Cleverly
Does the hon. Member think that perhaps the reason the good people of Hexham voted for him is because they were promised explicitly that his Government would not do what they are currently doing?
Joe Morris
When we start a new job and find that the previous person in that job had not paid invoices for the previous year and deliberately withheld financial information, we have an honest conversation with the public about what is achievable. In any business, we have to be honest with people about deliverables. [Interruption.] Well, ultimately people in my constituency were sick of the chaos. They were sick of seeing Liz Truss plastered all over the newspapers.
When I speak to my farmers, I hear a real cry for security and genuine forward-planning from a DEFRA that listens and is not turned into a political football, as it was too often by the Conservatives. I know, having grown up in a rural community alongside the children of farmers, that they value roads that are not full of potholes, a stable economy and libraries that are not falling down—exactly the public services that every one of us expects.