Conservative former Scottish secretary David Mundell warned that under plans to impose inheritance tax on agricultural property worth more than £1 million, farmers’ children will sell their land to private equity firms to cover the bill, and estates would instead be used for solar panels or industrial tree planting.
Mr Mundell said: “If we go down the route of requiring farms to be sold to meet inheritance tax demands, farms will not be sold to new family farmers.
They will be sold to these very private equity firms who want not to produce food on our land, but want to actually maximise other tax benefits that they can do under carbon offset and other environmental tax benefits that they get.
Mr Smith also suggested an “active farmer test” using Government data to “judge if the land is being put to public use”, and proposed a “clawback” system so the Treasury could charge for the relief if a farmer’s beneficiary sells the land within a short period of time after a death.
Sam Rushworth said that farmers who work a £5 million estate are “not millionaires”, while Julia Buckley said sector businesses currently face a choice to “go big or go bust”.
