As many Members know, I am able to speak with some expertise on this subject, as I was the first female director of the NFU in some 100 years and I now represent a constituency, in which I have lived for 34 years, where there are 1,006 farms or holdings. The Country Land and Business Association says that 432 of those farms will be affected by the measures.
I am known as somebody who tries to reach across the Chamber and make friends with hon. Members on both sides. I do not particularly enjoy confrontation, so there are elements of the debate that I have found unpleasant and disappointing. I do not like the references to class coming from the Labour Benches, or the suggestions that it has anything to do with class coming from hon. Members on the Conservative Benches. That is an irrelevance. Please do not play politics with my farmers—they are too important.
My plea to the Minister, when he is listening, is that he looks again—I am not asking him to change the policy; I understand that it is Treasury-driven—at some things that need to be looked at again. It is a flawed assumption that ownership is split 50:50 between spouses. That is not the case across Exmoor. And if it is not the case, especially in cross-generational farming families where older farmers hold on to the property so as not to burden the younger generation with increased capital gains tax on any future sale should they wish, then the relief stated by the Chancellor will not add up to the value stated.
Another flawed assumption is that average family farms are worth under £3 million. They are not. I am grateful to my constituent and good friend Guy Thomas-Everard, who went out of his way to give me the bill of sale for a perfectly average farm outside Winsford in my constituency. It is valued at £3.5 million, and that is before we count the deadstock and the livestock.