If the hon. Gentleman wants to call an Adjournment debate on Brexit, he is entitled to do so.
I was talking about the serious issue of how this farmer and many others up and down the country will be able to afford the tax—they will not. I understand that the Government have suggested that farmers should be forward-planning and gifting their farms to their children now, which would mean that they could avoid the tax in future. However, for many farmers, that is not an option.
I will take another constituent of mine, who farms near Fosse Way. He is still working on his farm at 93. He did not retire at 65 like many of us, but has kept working the long, hard days, as he did during the second world war, to ensure that we have enough food on our table. He has spent years planning to ensure that his grandchildren could inherit and take over the farming business. Instead, under this Government, his plan has gone completely out of the window, because he will have to live until he is 101 if he is to avoid the tax altogether.
The only option facing many farmers across the country is to sell off their land and stop farming. Those farmers have worked the land for generations. Their children will have seen their parents take over and will have expected to take over when they can, but now face a future of uncertainty. The Government fail to answer the question of what kind of person will buy the land when it goes on the market. It will not be the ones who have farmed the land all their lives. It will likely be foreign investors and hedge fund managers. They will not have generations of knowledge of how to work the land and will likely take prime arable land out of production, as they could possibly make more money from alternatives.
When I worked on the previous Public Accounts Committee—I urge the Minister to listen and to pledge that he will do this—I managed to obtain a commitment from the last Government that the food security index would be published in Parliament every year. Will the Minister give that pledge so we can continue doing that? That way we can see what effect the tax, the selling off of farms and taking land out of production is having and whether our food production is dropping.
I end with a plea to the Government to go back to the drawing board. I understand that a technical tax consultation on the changes is due to be published early
in 2025. I urge the Government to use this time to talk to farmers and professionals across the country and find a way that will ensure that farmers such as Nigel do not lose their life’s work to the taxman. Some obvious alleviations and changes to APR and BPR would be to raise the threshold, so that more smaller farm owners and rental farmers would be exempt, and to have a longer transitioning period. That will help farmers like 93-year-old Nigel. However, the best outcome would be to reverse the policy altogether. Farming is under threat. I do not want to see the fabric of our countryside destroyed for future generations.