It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox) on securing this important debate.
Devon is one of the farming heartlands of England. The rolling fields, so familiar to tourists and locals, are dutifully managed by Devon’s family farmers, over generations upon generations, producing the highest quality of produce. The county is renowned for the diversity of its farming, with a strong mix of dairy, beef and sheep, with some arable, accompanied by many a farm diversification.
Despite that, across the whole of the south-west, the average farm income is approximately £30,000 lower than the national average. It is vital, therefore, that the Government support those farms and family farmers to continue to deliver high-quality food produce, and to maintain our countryside for the future.
A subject on which the Government and I can find common ground is the money released via the Budget to improve the biosecurity facilities in Weybridge, which will help combat the challenges posed by bluetongue and other diseases. It is vital for farmers in Devon and across the country that we tackle any diseases and their threats early, not only to protect livestock, but to prevent costs spiralling out of control as a result of a fully-fledged outbreak.
Unfortunately, that is where the common ground ends. Since the Budget, the Government have chosen to levy a series of shattering changes on farmers, creating uncertainty. There has also been a failure to raise the overall farming budget, amounting to a real-terms cut in funding.
The rapid and unexpected delinking of payments from the basic payment scheme will see huge drops in the money received by farming businesses as soon as
next year. For many farms, that change in their financial forecasting will be devastating, with long-term plans scuppered as Government support is pulled out from underneath them.
Likewise, we are still waiting for the Government to outline their transition process from legacy higher level stewardship—HLS—schemes. Although those schemes have been extended by a year, many farmers are still unable to look beyond that term as they do not know what the Government will expect of them as they move towards the sustainable farming incentive. Indeed, many farmers I have spoken to are deeply frustrated that the equivalent SFI options to HLS options have higher payment rates, yet the Labour Government have made a choice not to allow those locked into HLS agreements the ability to easily transfer into the equivalent SFI.
Just last week, we heard of the sudden closure of capital grant schemes, causing deep frustration and confusion to many applicants. Let us not forget that capital grant funds for farmers aimed to deliver environmental outcomes, not just improve business efficiency. However, that funding has been slashed. Farmers and growers are being asked to adapt, and to adopt measures to improve the environment, but they have been left in the lurch by the Labour Government, without having access to important grant schemes that would enable them to do just that.
Only a month ago, we were shocked to hear plans to accelerate the phase-out of direct payments. Yet, just last week, we heard the decision by the Government to remove capital grants. How on earth is a farming business able to forecast its plans with certainty? There are also the increased direct costs expected, such as the carbon tax on fertiliser, which is estimated to increase the cost of fertiliser by £50 a tonne and will undoubtedly have a direct impact on the cost of food and consequentially inflate food prices. Then, in the Budget, we heard of the increase in employers’ national insurance, coupled with the reduction in the associated threshold, an increase in the minimum wage, the double cab pickup tax—I could go on.
Of course, the biggest impact on our Devonshire farmers and on farmers across the country will be Labour’s family farm tax. The average size of a farm in the south-west is around 200 acres. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and Tavistock rightly outlined the points raised by his constituent who is a dairy farmer. If we take the size of a dairy business coupled with the value associated with the farmland—400 acres was mentioned—the cost and value of the dairy cows, machinery and feedstocks, not to mention the value of the farmhouse and farm buildings, and perhaps any farm diversification project that has been taken into account, we will almost certainly be over and above the cap of £1 million that this Labour Government have chosen to put in place. That applies to both agricultural property relief and business property relief.
As I alluded to, farms in the south-west are even more cash-strapped than the national average. For the many farmers across Devon, the only option under this Labour Government’s implementation of their family farm tax will be to sell assets. But what assets do they sell? Put simply, the combined assault from all measures within the Budget will be fatal for many farms right
across the country. That is why the Conservatives want to see this tax reversed. We have forced a vote on that very issue on the Floor of the House tomorrow.
Unsurprisingly, not one Labour MP has contributed to this debate. I only hope that Labour MPs, and indeed this Labour Government, are listening to our British farmers and their constituents, who have raised these concerns time and time again since the Budget. That is why we pledged earlier this year to uprate and broaden the offering of SFI options. But we have heard from many farmers throughout the country that they are unable to get into those new options at the speed at which the previous Conservative Administration—and, it seems, the new Labour Administration—have been giving them out. I can only conclude that the Rural Payments Agency is acting slowly to create an underspend next year for the spending review, to see a slash in the farming budget next year. I hope that is not the case; maybe the Minister will be able to allude to the Government’s intentions.
I know for a fact that many of Devon’s stalwart farmers were alongside not only myself but my colleagues, in Whitehall just a couple of weeks ago, to protest against this Government’s shameful offering to farmers. I just hope that the Government were listening to their fury and their distress, and that they have listened to the comments that by Members from all Opposition parties in this debate, because it matters. The implications for health and wellbeing matter, and the mental health strain that has been put on our farming community matters. So I say to the Minister: listen carefully to what is being said to you; listen to the professional advisers out there. I only hope that you will change course imminently.
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