Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief

Debate between Joe Morris and Rupa Huq

Thursday 17th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Joe Morris]

I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point. I am glad that the last Government learned some of the lessons of the Australia trade deal and implemented them. It is important that we get an answer on APR and BPR. I am making a slightly political point, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will humour me for it, but it is important that we maintain that international trade is an ongoing piece and the agricultural sector does not exist in isolation. None of these reliefs exist in isolation. Farming, more than anything, is an industry with concerns that sit between the Treasury, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Business and Trade. More than almost any other industry, it is reliant on good cross-party and cross-departmental working, and we need to ensure that the Government do that. I hope that we do not consider these things just in isolation but overall and together, and we must ensure that the Government are working towards securing them.

One of the main concerns that I picked up from my constituency is the inability of consumers to distinguish between British and foreign produce when it is badged up the wrong way. I hope the Treasury will listen to representations on how we can combat that kind of false advertising when foreign produce is repackaged as UK produce. How we keep the family farm going, and how we ensure that small farms are able to continue to produce in the Tyne valley, is deeply concerning to me. I have spoken to a lot of local farmers about land loss and about large corporations buying up prime agricultural land and using it to—I think it is fair to say—greenwash. That is genuinely a national issue that requires cross-party cohesion and cross-party solutions. My own hackneyed political point scoring is not going to help in that, but in the long term and in this Parliament, I would always welcome working to address that. However, I urge the Minister to remember that farms are businesses and they need long-term consumer confidence. They need an overall business climate that rewards investment and entrepreneurialism, but not one that is not built on sand. They need one that is built on secure, stable foundations and that is open to serious cross-party working.

When we look at how we get the rural economy growing, it is really important that both land-owning farms and tenant farms in particular can continue to employ people and that there is money going out of those farms into the local economy. I have spoken to my constituents: they have had to take certain crops out of production to grow those that need less manpower. They would have employed people to work those fields or work that livestock, but they have been forced to change by often badly designed initiatives from DEFRA, and we need to work cross-party to ensure that those initiatives are better designed in future. They have been forced into those measures that, over the course of many years, slowly bring their workforce down and lead to less money coming into the local economy. In his response, I hope the Minister can ensure that the Treasury hears the pleas of rural communities. This issue is genuinely a concern across parties, and my constituents are very concerned about the ongoing removal of prime agricultural land from food production.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to make a speech. We will then calculate whether we need a time limit.