It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark.
I pay tribute to the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox) who, I feel, could probably have spoken on this subject for another half an hour, with plenty more to add. He is a landowner himself, so we note his experience.
I will highlight the plight of people in mid and east Devon whom I represent and who are feeling a great deal of uncertainty about the future. I will do so by giving a couple of examples. The first example is of a family farm near Cullompton. I will read directly from the letter that family sent me, because their words are quite touching:
“We have been farming within a 5-mile radius of here for over 400 years. Unfortunately the family had to sell the farm…in the 1860s at the start of the Great Agricultural Depression. It has taken us 150 years to regain ownership of a farm and now the inheritance tax issue threatens us with the risk of losing it again.”
That illustrates that we are not talking here about some short-term business enterprise that starts up and fades, as if it were some sort of digital business. This is a farm that has provided a livelihood for generations of people. It is not about capital or assets; it is about the hard graft of the people who do it.
The right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and Tavistock referred to the legacy of the previous Government and that legacy is worth examining. The cuts to the basic payment were one aspect of that. Another aspect was the Australia and New Zealand trade deal, which the Government’s own figures found had cost British farming £94 million. The proposed change to inheritance tax is but one more thing on top of all the other things that have given farmers a really torrid time in recent years.
I appeal to the Minister when he responds to the debate to take a look at this. We are talking about a Treasury benefit of perhaps £500 million in a Budget of
£40 billion of new taxes. The sum involved is a small sum for the Treasury in Whitehall, but it will have an enormous impact in the countryside.
I will give another example: the Derryman family, including Peter, his brother, and now his son. In many ways, they are emblematic of the sort of people from mid and east Devon whom I represent. They represent thousands of farming families who work really hard, grafting day and night, contributing to the local society and local economy in Stockland. However, they are very concerned. They only own 120 acres, so people might suppose that they would not be subject to a tax that is proposed on only the first £1 million of combined farm and business assets. However, when we look at the value of the farmhouse, the machinery, the land and livestock, it all adds up to a potential inheritance tax liability.
The Government claim that 73% of farms will not be affected, yet the NFU claims that seven in 10 farms will be; those figures cannot both be right. On 19 November, I was lobbied by people I represent, who asked me to say to the Minister that we should seek to discriminate between the genuine farmers and the hobby farmers. We know that there has been a tendency to use land as an inheritance tax dodge, but the genuine farmers who spent the day in London—it is very unusual for them to put down their tools and come here—said that there has to be a way to discriminate between those who have bought a few cows as a tax dodge and those who earn their living from the land.
The reality is that these people are working unsociable hours, they are physically exhausted, and some have been plagued by mental health issues. Constituents have told me that this tax is cruel, because there are only 17 months until it is introduced in 2026; people are reflecting on what they might have to do to dodge or avoid that tax before it is introduced.
We are not allowed to use props in this debate, but I have a photo that was given to me by Peter Derryman. It is of his young granddaughter with a prized lamb at a show in Devon. I would say to the Minister: whatever the technicalities, this is a matter of the heart.
3.32 pm