POLITICS: Communities ‘continue to reel’ after cruel budget blows
Communities across my constituency continue to reel from budget measures announced by the UK government at the end of October, writes Aberdeenshire North and Moray East MP Seamus Logan.
My inbox has been full of emails from local farmers concerned with the new cap to Agricultural Property Relief and changes to Inheritance Tax from a UK government that seem to be out of step with rural communities in Aberdeenshire and across Scotland.
I recently met with NFUS representatives to discuss these changes to APR and Inheritance Tax to hear their views first hand on the anger they feel towards the UK government. They are hugely concerned at what these proposals mean in practice, with some farmers now putting on hold plans to invest in the future of their farming operations as a result.
I’ve already written to the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, urging her to rethink these changes backed by a motion in Parliament calling for the same. I have also raised this issue with the Minister of State at DEFRA, Daniel Zeichner, asking how his government thinks this “body blow” to family farms will improve food security and indeed national security. The silence so far is deafening.
Astonishingly, the UK government had not informed Holyrood of these reforms to APR ahead of the budget, nor had they sought the views of Scottish farmers.
It is this lack of consultation that highlights an urban centric government out of touch with the reality of rural life – just as they have got it wrong on the real-world effect of scrapping the Winter Fuel Payment for millions of pensioners in Scotland, so have they misunderstood how badly APR and Inheritance Tax reform may affect many smallholdings and crofters in my constituency and beyond, despite Labour spin on this being a tax on the super-wealthy.
And talking of the Winter Fuel Payment, Reeves’ failure to u-turn on means testing pensioners for this payment could hit around 860,000 Scottish pensioners, forcing many to choose between heating or eating in a country where our winters can be harsh and unforgiving. New figures show this change could cost NHS Scotland up to £85 million from the hospitalisation of pensioners forced to live in cold and damp homes, a cost that will far outweigh any meagre budgetary savings.
It seems that Labour have got it in for pensioners in more ways than one. The budget also failed to make any mention of the continuing injustice to WASPI women despite the recent Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report which exposed the failings of the previous UK government and ruled that WASPI women should be compensated.
On the day of the budget, I met with local WASPI groups from the north-east protesting outside Westminster and restated my commitment to fight on for their cause despite their disappointment at the budget. I have also written to Pensions Minister Emma Reynolds to this effect and was pleased to see that she plans to update Parliament “in the coming weeks” on her review of the Ombudsman findings. However, given nearly 300,000 WASPI women have died since this report was published, any further delay to a firm commitment on starting up a compensation scheme will not be acceptable.
Finally, the massive hike in employer National Insurance contributions will mean less money for workers, less wage growth and the knock-on effects for SMEs not to mention health and social care. From farmers to business to health and to pensioners, Labour’s new budgetary approach seems both misguided and uninformed. The consequences will be devastating for my constituents, and I intend to make their voices heard.
