It is a great pleasure to have the right hon. Gentleman not just as a friend but as my Lincolnshire neighbour. He has put his finger on the point—genuinely, it is the next paragraph in my speech.
Some Labour MPs must be haunted by the phrasing from the Secretary of State during the general election campaign—because I suspect that they repeated it up and down the market towns and villages in their constituencies—when he described fears that Labour would impose this family farm tax as “desperate nonsense”. Labour candidates will have repeated that line and assured the farming families in their constituencies that Labour would never treat rural communities in that way, yet within weeks the Chancellor was planning to do exactly that.
Since then, families across the country have been trying to work out how to pick up the pieces after Labour’s family farm tax bomb. They will not forget. A farmer from Derbyshire emailed me this week to say:
“Our hard work and investment as a family has been wiped away in the stroke of a pen.”
They went on to say:
“My 60 year old husband had a bleed on the brain in June and thankfully has made a full recovery but I’ve never seen him so stressed. He doesn’t know what to do”.
Hon. Members representing seats in Derbyshire may wish to reflect on how they will respond to that. A farmer from Northumberland has written to me as follows:
“We had to talk about which one of my parents are going to die first, in front of them.”
He said that Labour is
“destroying people’s lives with this policy. Many of us are worried about the mental state of many within agriculture and are concerned that it may be the final straw for some.”
In fairness, the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris), who is in his place, has voiced concerns about whether his Government are listening to ordinary people about this. Will he vote for his farmers or will he toe the party line?