Member's statement: Budget: Impact on Farmers

Member's statement by Miss Michelle McIlveen on 4 November 2024.

MLA

Miss Michelle McIlveen

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

4 November 2024

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Budget: Impact on Farmers

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4625124

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The headline of the recent Budget announcement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the raising of £40 billion in additional taxation through taxes that the Labour Party repeatedly claimed it would not be raising throughout the general election campaign. The impact of that on farmers is what I want to speak about. When we talk about agriculture, it is worth remembering that it is worth £6 billion to the Northern Ireland economy, that it is our largest manufacturing sector and that it is a cornerstone of our local economy. It is also worth noting that around 36% of our population live in the countryside and that there are around 26,000 active farm businesses in Northern Ireland, which employ around 51,000 people. Any decision of the magnitude of that announced last week has the potential to have a devastating impact on those who live and work here. Last week, the Chancellor hit the agriculture sector with a triple whammy: the weakening of agricultural property relief; the removal of ring-fencing for the agriculture and fisheries budget; and the inflation-busting increase in the national living wage. So far this term, we have highlighted the pressures that are already being faced by our local farmers, including the ammonia regulations that are choking development; bovine TB not being addressed; the real-term reductions in the basic payment scheme over the past 10 years; the huge inflationary and wage costs accruing over recent years; and the devastating impact of the winter storms on last year's potato crops. The weakening of agricultural property relief will heap further pressure on the future of family farms. That will accelerate the breaking up of farms and drive more young people away from farming at a time when more are needed in the sector. That will affect our food security. A £1 million cap sounds high to the layman, but there are few viable farms worth under £1 million, and even those are not high earning. A viable farm is not necessarily a wealthy farm. Many farmers do not even pay themselves. Previously, agriculture and fisheries funding was a ring-fenced addition to our Budget. The Chancellor has announced her intention to include it in our block grant. That will mean that it has to compete against the big beasts of Education and Health. When we have raised with the Minister the problems that are being faced by the farming sector, he has not exactly been forthcoming in his support for it. When he could not stand up to his officials to give support for potato farmers last winter, how can the farming sector rely on him to fight for it in budgetary allocations when there is no ring-fenced budget? Those problems were compounded in the same Budget, with the inflation-busting rise in the national living wage. With farm incomes already down by 46%, an employer's national insurance hike, threats to the agriculture budget and the weakening of agricultural property relief, it is hard to see how farmers are going to meet the challenges without raising food prices massively, which, of course, will hit all of us, especially hard-pressed families.

Now more than ever, all of us, not just the farming sector, need our Agriculture Minister to finally step up.

538 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:27 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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