Businesses in Rural Areas

Debate between Greg Smith and Matt Western

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith]

I remember my right hon. Friend visiting the farm. It was in my constituency at the time, but the boundary changes actually took it away from me. Preventing the theft of machinery from not just farms but all rural businesses, which suffer so badly when equipment theft takes place, is a critical measure that we have to get right.

I take the important point that my right hon. Friend makes around illegal encampments. Any illegal development needs to be clamped down on in whatever form it takes. I pay tribute to Thames Valley police’s rural crime taskforce for some of its work on that. It would be good if the Minister could work with Home Office colleagues to extend that work across the whole country, and push the Minister for Policing, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), to introduce the statutory instruments that would bring the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act into full force.

Let us turn to the direction of travel on rural business under this Government, which gives me real concern. First, as others have mentioned, the increase in national insurance contributions and changes to the NICs thresholds place a disproportionate burden on rural employers, many of whom already operate on the tightest of margins. For a rural farm employing five seasonal workers, or a family-run dairy business with a handful of long-serving staff, these extra costs are not abstract; they are the difference between hiring and firing.

The sharp rise in the national living wage is hitting rural sectors, with seasonal and low-margin employment—especially farming, food processing and rural tourism—hit particularly hard. These sectors do not have the luxury of passing on costs to consumers in the same way that some of the big urban retail or tech companies do. They face fixed contracts and price pressures from supermarkets, and this change risks hollowing out jobs that were previously viable.

Compounding that is the change to business property relief, which will strip tax protections from many family-run rural enterprises such as holiday accommodation and equestrian centres, undermining succession planning and deterring future investment in those rural businesses. Labour has targeted the very dynamism that it claims to support.

Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill poses a serious threat to rural enterprise. By relaxing environmental safeguards and expanding compulsory purchase powers—removing hope value protections from prime farmland—the Bill risks allowing developers and central authorities to override local rural businesses and agricultural land. The removal of green belt-like protections from the mythical grey belt areas also paves the way for large-scale development in what were previously safe rural areas. Rural entrepreneurs now face heightened uncertainty over their long-term investments and succession plans. Farmers, holiday let providers and small rural manufacturers alike may wake up to find their economic foundations undermined by top-down planning interventions.

The Employment Rights Bill threatens significant administrative, legal and recruitment costs for rural businesses, which are estimated at up to £5 billion across the economy and are disproportionately heavier for small rural businesses, jeopardising their ability to hire flexibly or offer seasonal work.

But perhaps the most damaging of all is Labour’s recent change to agricultural property relief: the family farm tax. This is not simply a tweak to inheritance policy; it is a direct assault on the ability of farming families to pass on their land and their livelihoods from one generation to the next. An estimated 40,000 farming jobs will be lost under Labour’s plans to force all farmers to stop farming on up to 20% of their land.

The Government’s estimate of 27% of farms being impacted is based on outdated APR claims data from 2021-22 that does not reflect rising land values or the full economic picture of commercial family farms. Nearly 40% of farms rely on a combination of APR and BPR to mitigate inheritance tax liabilities. The £1 million threshold applies to both combined, making it far more restrictive than the Government’s modelling suggests. In my constituency, this is already causing disinvestment. I have spoken with farmers who are now deferring expansion, shelving plans for tourism ventures and, in some cases, considering breaking up long-held estates that have supported jobs and communities for generations.

Farm shops have, after years of successful trading, made the difficult decision to close. On rural high streets, costs have risen 15%. At Rumsey’s Handmade Chocolates in Wendover in my constituency, this is already leading to job losses and reduced hours for the staff they have been able to retain. The Pink and Lily pub in Lacey Green shut in February, just seven years after it first opened.

Rural Britain does not ask for favours, but it does demand fairness. It wants policies that reflect the unique challenges of doing business across distances, in smaller labour markets and with greater exposure to the weather, the global economy and regulatory interference. That is why the Opposition will continue to champion low tax, light-touch regulation and a level playing field for rural enterprise. The future of the rural economy cannot be sustained on sentiment alone; it must be underpinned by policy that understands the realities of rural life. On that test, thus far, Labour is failing.

[Matt Western (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I gently remind him to allow a couple of minutes for the mover of the motion at the end.

“Chapter 4A

Debate between Greg Smith and Matt Western

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Lady makes a point that she made in Committee. It was good to debate with her and others in Committee—we had a genuine and robust debate. What I am arguing for is flexibility and a recognition of how the employment market and our economy works in real life. To treat everything with one universal rule will be a disaster for our economy. I fear that it will result in fewer people in work and fewer jobs in the economy, and it certainly will not deliver the growth that this Government pretend they want to see.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Greg Smith]

How can I resist the hon. Gentleman?

[Matt Western]

Does the shadow Minister not accept that it is due to the expendability of employees in the workplace that we have such a poor rate of productivity in this country, particularly compared with France and Germany?

[Greg Smith]

I greatly respect the hon. Gentleman, and we have worked together on a number of issues in recent years, but I do not accept his point. Is there room to improve productivity? Of course there is—there is room to improve productivity across all sectors all the time; we would not grow the economy if we could not do that. However, the Bill takes a sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut. Applying a universal rule for all will not deliver what the hon. Gentleman nobly wishes to achieve in the economy. As is often the case in politics, the thing that divides us is not the end goal or the point we want to get to; it is the means of getting there. I do not think the Bill will deliver what he wants to achieve. He looks like he wants to intervene again. I want to make progress, but I will give him one last go.

[Matt Western]

The shadow Minister is being very generous. I am making a simple point: it is less motivating and of less interest to a company to invest in machinery and plant if it can ultimately change the structure of its workforce or expend them through fire and rehire. That is what is holding us back, and that is why we have a 20% deficit to France and Germany in terms of productivity.

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but I do not see businesses out there that want to expend or get rid of their workforces, or disinvest in them, and he is giving a very pessimistic outlook of the way that the business environment runs in this country. Businesses want to innovate. They want to grow and employ more people. They want to make more money. Making money is not something people should look down their noses at—it is a fundamentally good thing that creates wealth, grows the economy, and increases the tax base to pay for the services that we all want. I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s view of the world when it comes to the Bill and the point he is trying to make.

Listed Places of Worship Scheme

Debate between Greg Smith and Matt Western

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) on bringing this important debate to the attention of the House. The stakes are high if the scheme is discontinued, and it will put immense pressure on a small number of volunteers to keep those precious places of worship in good order.

Churches are not just places of worship. In my constituency, Holy Trinity church in Prestwood hosts a monthly breakfast between services, as well as toddlers’ activity groups and regular clubbercise sessions. St Mary’s in Long Crendon hosts choral evenings, mother and baby groups, orchestral events and—very importantly—a beer festival. Without critical restoration work, and the grant scheme making it possible, churches risk losing their vital place in the wider community.

At the 800-year-old St Mary Magdalene church in Great Hampden, fundraising started in 2018 for £300,000—excluding VAT—with restorative paintworks alone costing £50,000. The VAT relief afforded through the grant scheme was so critical to the project that, in its absence, fundraising would continue to this day; work would not even have started. The rector and her team have even arranged a loan facility to cover the time it might take to claim the VAT refund because they could not raise the funds to cover that element of the cost. In the rector’s words,

“The project would not have been possible without the grant scheme.”

I have also heard from St Mary’s church in Princes Risborough, which alongside St Peter’s church in Ilmer, has benefited hugely from the grant scheme, allowing both improvements and the maintenance of the building. In the coming months and years, substantial building works will be required that will benefit both the church and the community. Without the grant scheme, those simply will not happen.

In Great Missenden, the church of St Peter and St Paul provides a valuable service by providing a community space in the adjacent Oldham hall for activities supporting the village’s Church of England school as well as for the church itself. The treasurer has made it clear to me that the enhanced efficiency in planning for major works that the grant scheme allows for has been a great help to the church and the wider community in recent years.

I have given just a snapshot of how critical the scheme is to my constituents. When the Conservatives were in government, the scheme was renewed every year. We see and appreciate the value to communities of the vital and multifaceted roles that churches have, both in bringing people together and symbolising the proud history and traditions of our rural towns and villages. I hope that is foremost in the Minister’s mind when he, hopefully, delivers good news in his winding-up speech or in his written ministerial statement later today.

[Matt Western (in the Chair)]

Due to the constraints of time and the number of interventions, after the next speaker we will reduce the time to two minutes each.