Oral Answers to Questions

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

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

The Conservative DEFRA team met more than 100 farmers in Berkshire this week, ahead of the Budget, to continue our two-year campaign against the family farm tax and the family business tax. One farmer told us:

“I’m sat with a ticking time bomb and it’s unsurvivable for me. I would have to sell the farm to pay the bill.”

That is despite the Government’s humiliating partial U-turn. With six days to go before the Budget, can the Secretary of State explain why this Labour Government are putting families through that?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The issues around inheritance tax were dealt with by my predecessor. It was not a humiliating U-turn; it was the result of listening to what people were telling us. If the right hon. Lady wants change but describes a Government change as a humiliating U-turn, I am not quite sure whose side she is on.

[Victoria Atkins]

I can tell the Secretary of State now that I am not on the side of this Government. While Labour was complaining about black labradors and pubs at its party conference, the Conservatives were listening to rural business owners. They are being squeezed at every turn; the cost of energy, water, heating oil, petrol and diesel, as well as food prices, and the amount of red tape and taxes, are all up under this Government. The Secretary of State may have heard of two of them: Jeremy Clarkson and Cheerful Charlie—in fact, the Secretary of State has stood up Cheerful Charlie three times. They asked a question at our party conference that I hear in market towns and villages across the country under this Government: why would anyone start a business in this country right now?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The right hon. Lady has some brass neck to stand up and say that. When she was in the Treasury, food inflation was at 19.1%. We know that some of the pressures on energy and power, which are in turn putting such pressure on everybody, across all aspects of our economy, are due to global instabilities and what is happening in the middle east. I met Cheerful Charlie, and he is a reasonable man. By the way, I did not stand him up three times; there were some holds in the diary that they put in. I spend my time listening to farming communities, and I will not take any lessons from the right hon. Lady.