Steve Barclay
Main Page: Steve Barclay (Conservative - North East Cambridgeshire)Department Debates - View all Steve Barclay's debates with the HM Treasury
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Ben Goldsborough
I will continue for a little while.
There is a deep uncertainty among farmers about what the changes will mean for them. Uncertainty is bad for business and it is bad for farmers’ mental health, so I encourage the Government to offer as much proactive engagement and clarity to farmers as possible, including in their response to this debate.
Another primary reason why farmers are so concerned is that they already face a challenge in keeping their businesses profitable. The CLA modelled a typical 350-acre arable farm. They told me that even if they spread the cost over 10 years, the farmer would be paying 100% of their annual profits for each of those 10 years to cover the proposed inheritance tax bill. That is a decade without profit. It should be acknowledged that all individuals across the UK are subject to rules that encourage gifting in advance of death. Farmers look likely to enter this world. It is true that farmers have held on to assets for longer than the average person because of APR, and the habit is unlikely to continue.
Ben Goldsborough
I am sorry but I have taken a lot of interventions and want to move on to the next part of my speech.
I will now touch on solutions. The petition is clear that it seeks the scrapping of the policy. I will leave it for the Minister to respond with the official position; suffice it to say that all Members in this debate can agree that land banking for inheritance tax purposes is wrong, and that land values are prohibitively expensive for many farms to be able to expand and, even more so, for new farmers looking to enter the industry. Many farmers would like to see those things change over the coming years.
Farmers have told me that if the policy is not scrapped altogether, alternatives could be considered to give the sector more stability at the same time as helping the Government to achieve their ambition of a thriving rural economy. One such alternative is a shortened taper rate for older farmers. Under that proposal, a farmer aged 70, for example, would be given two to three years to hand over their property with a 33% or 50% taper rate after one year. Farmers in my constituency would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that proposal, as it was raised with me at a recent meeting I had with the NFU eastern team. There are, of course, various ways of tweaking such approach by age or taper time but, according to farmers, movement on that front would give those who have worked the longest under the existing APR rules the ability to arrange their affairs more quickly.
Steve Barclay
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I am confused by his argument. He is talking about the crux of the issue: what is the scope of this tax? He voted in favour of it. He was quoted in the Eastern Daily Press as saying that it would not hit “proper farming families”. Is it his position that this tax does not hit proper farming families, or should the scope of the tax be changed? That is the crux of the issue, and with respect to the argument he has set out, I do not know what his position is, other than that he voted not to change the scope.