Farmers to join protest rally in Westminster against family farm tax

Farmers are preparing to join a protest rally in Westminster to demonstrate against the government’s new inheritance tax on their land.

More than 180,000 people have added their names to a national petition calling for the controversial plans to be reversed to save family farms from being broken up and sold.

The action follows the announcement in the Budget that a 20 per cent ‘death’ tax will be levied on agricultural land and buildings worth more than £1million. Previously, there had been 100 per cent relief on such property.

However, the environment minister - Cambridge’s Labour MP Daniel Zeichner - says the figures are “absolutely clear” and fewer than 500 farms will be impacted.

But farmers have pointed to data from Defra which suggests 66 per cent of farm businesses are worth more than the £1million threshold at which inheritance tax will now have to be paid.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) says long-established family farms will be forced to sell off land to pay tax bills, making them unviable.

A huge protest rally will take place in London on Tuesday (19 November), set up by the Farmers’ Forum. Originally scheduled for Trafalgar Square, it has been moved to Westminster because the location was considered not to be big enough for the thousands expected to turn up.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement was made despite multiple warnings from NFU president Tom Bradshaw before the Budget and 3,500 emails sent from union members to MPs.

Immediately after the announcement, Mr Bradshaw said: “The current plans to change APR and BPR need to be overturned and fast.

“Farmers are rightly angry and concerned about their future and their family farms, having been reassured by ministers in the lead-up to the budget that APR and BPR changes were not on the table.”

Despite this, the environment secretary has insisted that “three quarters of farmers will pay nothing” as he faced questions from the Conservatives about whether the figures had been “checked before the Budget”.

Shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins told the Commons: “The Secretary of State and the food minister claim that their family farm tax will affect only a quarter of farms.

“Yet after informed questioning by the NFU, the CLA (Country Land and Business Association), the TFA (Tenant Farmers Association) and this side of the House, the minister has now admitted they need to check their figures.

“Should the cost of the family farm tax to farming families have been checked before the Budget?”

Mr Reed replied: “HMRC data is crystal clear. Three quarters of farmers will pay nothing as a result of these changes, family farming will continue into future generations, just as it should do.”

Ms Atkins said: “He can explain the veracity and the accuracy of his figures next week, when thousands of farmers are coming to Westminster to rally against the family farm tax, the delinking of payments, the hike in national insurance and other tax hikes on working farms as a result of this Budget.”

Farmers are “reasonable people”, Mr Reed said, who will “want to look at the facts”.

He said: “They, like everybody else, will see that if they drill into that HMRC data, three quarters of them will end up paying no more under the new system than they do today.”

Earlier in the session, shadow environment minister Robbie Moore said “the Treasury doesn’t have the data” and the Government is only considering “past claimants of agricultural property relief, not combined with business property relief”.

Mr Zeichner replied: “We seem to be having this discussion endlessly, don’t we?

“And the figures are absolutely clear on agricultural property relief, and the reason I’ve kept asking for people to look at the detail, is because when you look at the detail what we will find – and listen to the tax experts, listen to the people who have actually looked at it in detail – fewer than 500 will be affected.

“That is the reassuring message that his side should be conveying to British farmers as well.”

Conservative former minister, Sir Jeremy Wright, said the government had “justified” the raise in IHT “on the basis it’s concerned about people gaining short term tax advantage”.

He asked the minister if the department had “considered an approach – rather than the sweeping changes it made – which would limit the IHT exemption to those who could demonstrate the family farm had been in family ownership for a certain number of years.

“If that approach was explored, why wasn’t it pursued? And if it wasn’t explored, why not?”

Mr Zeichner said: “One of the beneficial aspects of this policy may be to get the generational shift that farming so much needs in this country.

“There are many parts to this policy. It is a complicated policy, and in future, we will have further discussions.”

Chair of the Defra select committee, Alistair Carmichael, congratulated the government on the “achievement of the Budget” as he had “never seen such a degree of unity among farming organisations in their response to it”.

There are two elements to next Tuesday’s rally in London because demand to attend has been overwhelming.

The NFU is staging a lobbying meeting in Westminster, where speakers will take to the rostrum, with MPs also invited to attend.

In tandem, hundreds of farmers aim to bring their produce to the capital to create the country’s biggest food bank.