Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs

3. What estimate he has made of the number of farmers affected by changes to agricultural and business property reliefs.

Around 500 claims each year will be impacted. Our reforms will mean that farmers will pay a reduced inheritance tax rate of 20%, rather than the standard 40%, and payments can be spread over 10 years interest free. Farm-owning couples can pass on up to £3 million without paying inheritance tax. In our view, this is a fair and balanced approach, and should be seen against the backdrop of the Government committing £5 billion for farming over two years—the largest budget directed at sustainable food production and nature’s recovery in our country’s history.

I am starting to feel like DEFRA Ministers are purposefully ignoring me and Devon’s farming community. I have given the Secretary of State since early December to answer my letters and my invitations to meet with Devon’s farming community, in order to explain how changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief are going to affect them. At the last DEFRA questions, I called out the Secretary of State for not replying to any of my requests. The Minister for food, farming and fisheries replied from the Dispatch Box that

“I would love to meet farmers in Devon, so I am happy to add him to the list for my grand tour across the country to reassure people that there is a strong plan to ensure that farmers have a viable future”.—[Official Report, 6 February 2025; Vol. 761, c. 909.]

So far, those platitudes have gone unrealised. With less than a month until these changes take effect, Devon’s farmers are still in the dark about how the changes are going to affect them. If this is how Ministers treat fellow MPs, is it any wonder that farmers up and down the country feel completely abandoned by this Labour Government?

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s complaint, but I have been to Devon in my role before, and I will come to Devon again. I am always happy to meet farmers. I have spent quite a lot of time at this Dispatch Box answering questions from Conservative Members, so perhaps fewer questions will mean more time to go out and meet farmers.

I call the shadow Minister.

Back in November, the farming Minister unbelievably said from the Government Dispatch Box that it was striking how many people were coming up to him at farming events and saying, “You’re right to be making these changes to APR and BPR.” Conservative Members have been out and about all over the country; indeed, I was in Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Shropshire yesterday, and I have not found one farmer who thinks that he is right. In fact, the level of anger and sheer disbelief among our farming community is immense as this Government’s attack on our farming cash flows continues through the dramatic reduction in delinked payments, the sudden stop of the sustainable farming incentive and the rise in employer’s national insurance contributions—I could go on. Business confidence is at an all-time low, so can the Minister provide the name of just one farmer he has spoken to who thinks he and his Government are right to be pursuing these changes?

I suggest that the shadow Minister goes out and speaks to a few more people, because I was stopped in a local village just this weekend and encouraged —[Interruption.] I am not going to name names, but he should check with some of his Conservative candidates in elections. They said, “Keep on going, you are doing the right thing.” The situation is not as the shadow Minister describes. He might do well to look at the figures for projected farm business incomes for this year, which show that in many sectors, those business incomes are doing rather well. That probably explains why people are not as exercised about it as him.

I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.

Is the Minister aware that some of the farmers who will be worst hit by the APR changes are those who farm in severely disadvantaged areas in the uplands around our country, where typically property values are high and incomes are extremely low? When the change was made just last week with people being excluded from the sustainable farming incentive, 6,100 people had entered the SFI in this session, and only 40 of them were hill farmers. Is he also aware that his own Department’s figures show that at the end of the transition, the average hill farm income will be 55% of the national minimum wage? Does he not understand that his changes are bringing harm to the poorest farmers in the prettiest places, such as mine? Will he undertake to look at the Liberal Democrat proposal to bring in an uplands reward so that we do not plunge into poverty those people who care for our precious landscapes?

The hon. Gentleman always speaks with passion about his constituents, and I absolutely understand those concerns. He is right to say that the schemes we inherited did not reward those areas as well as they should. That is why in our announcement a few weeks ago, we increased the higher level stewardship payments by £30 million, which will be of particular advantage to people in his area. I agree with him, and the schemes we inherited were not good enough. That is why we are revising them.