The farming community has reacted with fury and despair to Rachel Reeves’ budget with many questioning what they have spent their entire lives working for.
Di Clements, a dairy farmer in southwest Wales, said: “I’m stunned. We’ve slogged our guts out for 40 years, making so many sacrifices, and it’s all been for what? To saddle our children with a huge debt when we die.
“Many farmers will just give up. I feel gutted. Three farmers have taken their own lives in the last six weeks. I think there will be more. Terrible day.”
The Labour Chancellor’s budget introduced a 20 per cent tax on assets over £1million, saddling farmers’ children with huge tax bills when their parents die and leave their asset-rich but cash-poor farms to them.
As a result, farmers will be forced to sell chunks of land to foot the bill, breaking up land that has been passing down through families for generations, damaging the fabric of Britain’s countryside and worsening our food security.
Victoria Vvyvan, President of the Country Land and Business Association, said: “This budget rips the rug from under farmers is nothing short of a betrayal.
“We estimate that capping agricultural property relief at £1million could harm 70,000 UK farms, damaging family businesses and destabilising food security.
“In its attempts to raise more revenue the government will cause great damage, jeopardising the future of rural businesses up and down the country.
“Many farmers, operating on slim margins, will now face having to sell land to pay inheritance taxes. It puts dynamite beneath the livelihoods of British farming.”
Government statistics show 17% of UK farms failed to make a profit in 2022/23, while 59% made a profit of less than £50,000, leaving little scope to pay inheritance tax out of farm income.
With the price of land high in Britain, it will only take about 60 or 70 acres to trigger the £1 million threshold and incur inheritance tax, according to No Farms No Food. That's the equivalent of one medium sized golf course.
Farmers take part in a tractor "go-slow" to raise awareness of the difficulties for the British farming industry in March 2024
PA
Olly Harrison, a cereal farmer near Liverpool, told GB News yesterday morning: “If I find out today that I’ve worked all my life to hand my farm down to my kids only for someone who thinks they’re Robin f**king Hood to take it all away, I'll be the first to drive my tractor down to London.
“Food production will be gone in a generation, this is madness. I now can’t afford to die.
“I was only doing it for my kids, no one owns a farm you only look after it for the next generation, and now 20 per cent of it [after the threshold] the government wants when I die. What is the point? I’m lost for words.”
Anna Longthorp, a pig farmer in Yorkshire, said: “Young farmers’ dreams have been shattered.
“Farming is a life, not a job. It requires significant assets in land machinery, but it pays poorly.
“Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves haven't stolen our kids' jobs, they've stolen their lives.”
It is a particularly bitter blow for the farming community after repeated assurances from Labour they would not change agricultural relief from inheritance tax before the election.
Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, added an extra kick in the teeth when he told parliament yesterday: “Farmers would have to do more with less.”
Tom Bradshaw, President of the National Farmers’ Union, said: "It's been a disastrous budget for family farmers and especially tenant farmers.
The shameless breaking of clear promises on Agricultural Property Relief will snatch away the next generation's ability to carry on producing British food, plan for the future and shepherd the environment.
"It's clear the government does not understand, or perhaps doesn't care, that family farms are not only small farms, and that just because a farm is a valuable asset it doesn't mean those who work it are wealthy.
“Keir Starmer promised to establish a new relationship with farming and the countryside. He's certainly done that."
LATEST FROM MEMBERSHIP:
Jeremy Clarkson has blasted the government over its decision to cap farmers' IHT relief
INSTAGRAM/JEREMY CLARKSONSeveral high-profile names have been quick to slam Reeves’ effective scrapping of farmers' IHT relief online including TV Presenter Gareth Wyn Jones, former rugby referee Nigel Owens and food critic Jay Rayner.
Kirstie Allsopp, the TV presenter, said: “Rachel Reeves had f**ked all farmers, she has destroyed their ability to pass farms on to their children, and broken the future of all our great estates, it is an appalling decisions which shows the government has ZERO understanding of the what matters to rural voters.”
Jeremy Clarkson said: “Farmers. I know that you have been shafted today. But please don’t despair. Just look after yourselves for five short years and this shower will be gone.”
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been approached for comment.
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