Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate her Department has made of the number of farmers in West Dorset who will be affected by the proposed changes to Inheritance Tax, including Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief.

The Government has published information about the reforms to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) at www.gov.uk/government/publications/agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief-reforms. The Chancellor also recently wrote to the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee regarding the APR reforms; the letter can be accessed at: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/45691/documents/226235/default/.

It is expected that up to around 2,000 estates across the UK will be affected by the changes to APR and BPR in 2026-27, with around half of those being claims that involve AIM shares. Almost three-quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief (or those claiming agricultural property relief and business property relief together) are expected to be unaffected by these reforms.

In accordance with standard practice, a tax information and impact note will be published alongside the draft legislation before the relevant Finance Bill.

Information from claims is not recorded to enable regional or constituency-level breakdown of the number of estates expected to be affected.

For more information, please see my recent letter to the Chair of the Northern Ireland Select Committee: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/46267/documents/232537/default/.