Jim Shannon

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), who set the scene incredibly well. I have four points of 30 seconds each. When we talk about farming in Northern Ireland, we are talking about family farms. Over 27,000 farming families across Northern Ireland work the land day in and day out. Financial sustainability requires three things from this Government: certainty, equity and protection. We need an increased multiannual farm support budget that is fully inflation-proofed. If there are no farmers, there is no food. That cannot be right. Financial sustainability is impossible if farmers are forced to sell their top-quality, world-leading produce at or below the cost of production. The Government must use their powers to enforce fair dealing and transparency right across the agrifood network, and they must protect the family farm structure from punitive taxation. Recent proposals and changes threatening agricultural property relief and business property relief strike at the very heart of generational sustainability. Forcing a grieving family to sell off parcels of land just to pay an inheritance tax bill destroys the viability of enterprise overnight. It is a tax on food security and the Democratic Unionist party will stand four-square against it.