Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to her Department's policy paper entitled Summary of reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief, published on 30 October 2024, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of widening the consultation to consider (a) allowing relief on agricultural and business assets to roll over to a proprietor’s surviving spouse, (b) decoupling agricultural property relief and business property relief and (c) determining a measure of agricultural trading income suitable for use as a threshold to allow agricultural property relief to be claimed.

The Government published information about the reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief at www.gov.uk/government/publications/agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief-reforms.

It is expected that up to around 2,000 estates will be affected by the changes to APR and BPR in 2026-27, with around half of those being claims that involve AIM shares. Almost three-quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief (or those claiming agricultural property relief and business property relief together) are expected to be unaffected by these reforms.

The government will publish a technical consultation in early 2025. This will focus on the detailed application of the allowance to lifetime transfers into trusts and charges on trust property. This will inform the legislation to be included in a future Finance

In accordance with standard practice, a tax information and impact note will be published alongside the draft legislation before the relevant Finance Bill.