Thousands of British farmers today (19) are set to march to Parliament Square to protest against the end of an inheritance tax exemption that has helped family farms pass down the generations, saying the move will threaten food production.
First unveiled in chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Budget, the plans to impose inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1m have sparked fury among rural communities, who have contested the government’s assertion that small family farms will not be impacted by the changes.
Opposition to the so-called "tractor tax" is one part of a wider backlash against Reeves's financial plans. Farmers say the change will threaten the viability of family farms, which often have tight profit margins, and that their children will have to sell land to cover the tax bill, raising the risk that food production will suffer.
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has organised an event in which 1,800 of its members will meet with local MPs at Westminster to voice their anger on Tuesday, as thousands are also separately expected to stage a demonstration in Whitehall. Protest organisers say that while this event will be peaceful and include children driving toy tractors, rallies could escalate in the future if the government refuses to budge.
In an interview with BBC News, Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said that farmers felt particularly aggrieved because last year, when Steve Reed was shadow environment secretary, he said Labour was not planning to change agricultural property relief (the inheritance tax exemption). He said farmers only started hearing rumours that the government was going to go back on this about a week before the budget.
He said he did not accept the government’s claims that most farms will not be affected by the change. Instead, he said, “75 per cent of the commercial farms in the United Kingdom will be within the scope of this policy change.”
Bradshaw also said farmers were willing to work with the government to produce a better version of the policy. He explained: "This policy is ill thought through. There’s still a 20 per cent benefit for the uber-wealthy to invest in agricultural land, and with the changes they’ve made to pensions, they’ve now incentivised people to rip money out of pensions and invest in up to £1m of agricultural land.
"That is not going to deliver for food security. It’s absolutely nonsensical. It’s not joined up. There’s no thought about the impact on food production or the families that produce this country’s food.
"Let’s sit down [with the government]. Give us the question. Tell us what the exam question is. We will work with you. If you want to stop people using land as a tax dodge, let’s work out the policy that does that. But this policy is not the answer."
The government argues that tax exemptions have led to wealthy non-farmers seizing agricultural land and pricing out genuine young farmers, and point to Budget funding of £5bn to help farmers produce food.
Brian McLister
