Sir Ashley Fox

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. Since the election last year, our rural businesses have been let down by the Labour Government. Their family farm tax has had a grave impact on the rural economy. Constituents talk to me of the enormous worry that that proposal is causing them. It threatens their family businesses with a huge tax bill when the owner of the farm dies. It is causing investment in rural areas to fall as families wonder how they can pay the tax; many will be forced to sell productive land or assets just to pay it. That not only is deeply wrong, but puts our food security at risk. If we combine it with the Chancellor’s jobs tax, the Government seem to be designing a system to cause as much damage as possible to family-run businesses in rural areas. New taxes are not the only issue causing harm to businesses. Look at the disastrous scrapping of the sustainable farming incentive scheme earlier this year. The SFI was one of the main sources of Government support available to farmers, but it was closed to new applications with no warning whatsoever in a move the National Farmers Union described as “crushing”. Digital infrastructure is critical to supporting the rural economy. Across Somerset, the Government have scaled back plans to install gigabit-capable broadband. In my constituency of Bridgwater, average speeds are already far below the national average, and now 1,450 properties have been descoped and are not included in the new deal. In the spending review, the target for Project Gigabit has been pushed back from 2030 to 2032. Minister, how can we close the productivity gap between urban and rural areas when digital infrastructure is not a priority for the Government?