Small Farms and Family Businesses

Lord Bishop of Newcastle Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. I commend her speech and her lifetime of bold interventions.

Stretching from the Scottish borders to the River Tyne, my diocese is largely made up of farming communities. For many, farming is about much more than making a living and has been their way of life for generations. A tractor horn outside this Chamber yesterday loudly proclaimed that “Old MacDonald has a farm”,’ but for how much longer?

I appreciate that the Government intend to target wealthy landowners buying land to avoid tax, but I fear that they have not adequately considered the impact on tenant farmers. The north-east has the highest regional proportion of tenant farmers. I pay tribute to my noble friend from the north Lord Curry of Kirkharle, who spoke from his own experience. Following the Budget, farming tenants are now faced with a greater lack of security. What assessment has been made, and will be made, of the impact that the changes to inheritance tax will have on tenant farmers?

Furthermore, only 32% of farming land in the north-east is arable. The national average is 52%. Most farmland in the region is used for upland and hill sheep farming. These farms receive a lower income, with the average business income for hill farms in 2023-24 being £23,500. Many farming families in Northumberland are cash poor, and hidden poverty is widespread. Hill farming requires less land than arable farming, meaning that under the new tax reforms, if a family is forced to sell their land to pay inheritance tax, in many cases there would not be enough land left to make the farm viable. As a farmer at the Hexham auction mart said last week: “If I die, that’s it”. What assessment have the Government made of the impact that the changes to inheritance tax will have specifically on upland and hill farmers?

I finish by sharing the situation of a farming family in Northumberland, where three generations are living in one farmhouse, with five adults and three children. Three of the adults have full-time jobs away from the farm to make ends meet but spend their evenings and weekends working on the farm. Last week, the grandfather had to take time off work to sell his sheep at the auction mart. Families such as this one illustrate how farming is not simply a way to make money but their way of life. If a death were to occur in this family, three generations would be left without their home.

I urge the Government to truly consider the impact of these reforms and encourage them to have continued dialogue and an assessment of the impact on farming families and rural communities—the people to whom we owe the food on our tables.