Amendment 158

Part of Agriculture Bill - Committee (5th Day) – in the House of Lords at 6:15 pm on 21 July 2020.

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Photo of Lord Marlesford Lord Marlesford Conservative 6:15, 21 July 2020

My Lords, I draw the attention of the Committee to my farming interests in Suffolk, as in the register. I will speak to Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. I support what she has said, but will take it wider. The community infrastructure levy was originally introduced in around 2010, when, as she explained, it was intended to be a reasonably small contribution towards any infrastructure implications, primarily of developing housing.

Unfortunately, the levy has recently been seen—inevitably perhaps—as a means for strapped local authorities to raise funds directly. There seems to be little control or constraint on what local authorities can do with CILs. I think the Government should look at this closely, because recently, and certainly in the part of Suffolk I am from, they have increased them as much as 10 times. At the same time, the big housing developers often bargain their way out of making any contribution at all.

What I really want to suggest is that our thinking should move on and be not just about the construction of new agricultural buildings. More relevantly from the point of view of diversification of farming, which is what this Bill is very much about, it should also be about the conversion of redundant farm buildings into dwellings, for example. This is thoroughly desirable. Buildings can be converted economically and attractively, adding to the landscape and providing additional housing at a time when we should want to encourage this very much.

One of the anomalies is that new houses are not subject to VAT whereas the conversion of a redundant farm building to a dwelling is subject to 5% VAT. We should consider exempting the conversion of a redundant farm building for whatever purpose, provided that it remains part of the farming enterprise—even, for example, conversion to a house, regardless of whether it is for someone who is going to work on the land. It is part of diversification. Provided that the building is part of the holding, it should be seen in the context of the raw business unit, a point I made at an earlier stage of this Bill. We should think wider and recognise that anything we can do to encourage farmers to diversify and use their assets for other purposes should be encouraged.