Traffic in Westminster was brought to a standstill, as thousands of farmers, many in tractors, descended on London in the latest protest against the government’s controversial inheritance tax proposals.
According to Farmers Weekly, 1,400 tractors were driven into London from all over the country in the ‘Change Your Tune, Starmer’ rally, organised by Save British Farming.
“We have brought tractors to London several times and every time we have come back we’ve got bigger and louder, and we’re not going to go away,” SBF founder Liz Webster told the crowd.
The four UK farming union Presidents, Tom Bradshaw (NFU), Aled Jones (NFU Cymru), William Irvine (UFU) and Andrew Connon (NFU Scotland), with Mr Bradshaw telling the farmers ‘every meeting I go into, we carry your weight on our shoulders.’
“We will fight every day until we get the outcome that mitigates the disastrous impact of the proposals that we have seen in the Budget. The one change that Sor Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves can make today to make this better is to consult or stop the proposals around inheritance tax and we will continue to fight that until they finally listen,” he said.
Newly-elected NFU Scotland president Andrew Connon said: “NFU Scotland, and the other UK farming unions, are calling on the Treasury to pause, re-think and properly consult due to the serious negative impact the proposals for IHT reforms would have on growth and employment in the agricultural sector, the wider rural economy and on the nation’s food security.
“We strongly believe that proper consultation would ensure that any reforms to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) will better enable the UK Government to meet its fiscal objectives; working family farm businesses would not be arbitrarily broken up on death and the land available for agricultural tenancies would not be reduced.”
Ramping up
MPs are debating inheritance tax relief for working farms today, after a petition asking the government to #StopTheFamilyFarmTax reached more than 147,000 signatures.
The rally was also addressed by Reform leader Nigel Farage, who called on farmers to continue ‘persistent and peaceful’ campaigning on new inheritance tax rules, suggesting that Labour MPs in rural seats would be ‘getting scared’, Sky News reports.
“I’m pleased to see the campaign is ramping up. It’s growing right across the country,” he said.
Paul Vicary, from Sevenoaks, told the BBC he was worried about the future of his family farm and warned the policy could affect the UK’s food security
“The cash flow in most family farms is just not great enough to actually pay those taxes. To pay inheritance tax we’d have to cut our farm in half, then [with] what’s left you wouldn’t make a living off of a few pony paddocks that’s left.
“So, the food security for the country from loyal generational farmers would be gone.”