Finance Bill

I want to address the way in which the agricultural buildings allowance affects tenant farmers. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) will cover the wider aspects of the amendment. However, I doubt that the Treasury talked to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the matter and examined the agricultural holdings legislation. Some 40 per cent. of farmers in this country are tenants who do not own the land on which they farm. Agricultural holdings legislation—tenancy legislation—allows them, with the permission of the landowner, to construct buildings on the land, but they never own the buildings. The ownership reverts to the landowner either at the end of the tenancy, or at the end of any fixed period agreed between the landowner and the tenant. In the past, the agricultural buildings allowance has been the only form of return for tenant farmers constructing such buildings, apart from the benefit of the buildings. They have no capital asset to sell or let because they are not the owners of the land. The retrospective nature of clause 35 means that they will lose the ABA and have nothing. As the hon. Members for Stroud (Mr. Drew) and for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) said, the measure will hit all farmers, but it will hit tenant farmers who do not own the land on which a building is constructed especially hard. I appreciate the Chief Secretary’s interest in my speech. I suspect that what I am saying is news to him and that he did not know about the agricultural holdings legislation. It would be a tremendous gesture if he were to agree that the approach in the Bill is not sensible, at least until he has talked to DEFRA officials about the impact that the measure will have on the 40 per cent. of farmers in this country who do not own their farms and rely on the ABA as the only way of getting back the capital that they have invested in a farm building that will never be theirs to dispose of, or to benefit from in any other way. I support the gist of the amendment. I hope that the Chief Secretary will think about the damage that the measure will do to an important sector of our agricultural industry.