Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I wish a merry Christmas to everyone in the House, and also to everyone in our farming, food, hospitality and water sectors. But not everyone will be able to celebrate Christmas. In recent weeks, a farmer took himself off to a remote part of his farm and killed himself. The message he left his family, who wish to remain anonymous, is that he did this because he feared becoming a financial burden to his family because of changes to inheritance tax. This is the human cost of the figures that the Secretary of State provides so casually. What does the Secretary of State say to that grieving family?

[Steve Reed]

I extend my heartfelt sympathies to that family, but I think it is irresponsible in the extreme to seek to weaponise a personal tragedy of that kind in this way. Where there is mental ill health, there needs to be support for that, and this Government are investing in it. The right hon. Lady knows from the last year for which data is available that the vast majority of claimants will pay absolutely nothing following the changes to agricultural property relief.

[Victoria Atkins]

How heartless and how extraordinary that the Secretary of State is more discomfited by being presented with the facts of the consequences of his policy than the reality of what this policy ensures. I was a Minister for seven and a half years, and I have never seen a policy have the consequences that this one has. [Interruption.] Members of the public will see Labour Members reacting in that way because I have dared to present them with the facts. We know that there is a tragically high suicide rate among the farming community. The National Farmers Union gave evidence about this, and the Secretary of State has been told repeatedly. Will he collect data on a monthly basis of suicides from farmers, farming families, landowners and family businesses, so that we, the House and the outside community can understand the human costs of this tax policy before it comes into force?

[Steve Reed]

Mental health services are the responsibility of the national health service, and the former Health Secretary, who broke the NHS, is in no position to lecture anybody about public services. She was no friend of the health service and mental health services, and she is no friend of farming. Some 12,000 farms went bust on the Conservatives’ watch. They failed to get £300 million out the door and into the pockets and bank accounts of farmers, and they signed a trade deal with Australia that undercut British farmers on environmental and welfare standards. I hear the posturing, but it is this Government who are standing up for farming.