Thousands of farmers protested against the Government’s Inheritance Tax proposal (Image: PA)
This week is the annual Oxford Conference and will be hoping to use it as an opportunity to get back in the good graces of Britain’s farmers after months of Environment Secretary Steve Reed will unveil a plan to make farming “more profitable and sustainable” to shift anger away from the party’s changes to rules and “reset” their relationship with irate farmers. But I’m not optimistic.
He is, of course, correct that farmers need to be paid more fairly for their produce. Research shows that farmers get just 1p for every loaf of bread or block of cheese sold. Plus, according to the , farms only make on average 0.5% annual return on the value of their land, livestock and machinery.
With a staggering 64% of British fruit and vegetable farmers reporting last year that their farm was at financial risk (up from 49% in 2023), you really have to wonder why Labour is still cracking on with this senseless tax raid that puts so many family farms at risk. And to raise a pittance for the Treasury, no less.
mean that, for the first time in decades, farms worth more than £1million will have to pay a 20% inheritance tax rate, with payments spread over 10 years. It’s ironic that Mr Reed talks about making farms more “profitable”; I won’t be surprised if many ceased to exist altogether! And you can be sure that if those that do survive manage to turn a profit, Labour will tax them before they ever see a penny of it.
Make no mistake, reckless agriculture policy puts us all at risk. Last year was the second worst harvest on record for England, with drops in wheat and winter barley yields. And what’s worse, existing agricultural land has never been more vulnerable to climate change, with a record high number of flood warnings covering much of England’s best and most productive farmland.
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit estimated that these drops in yield and precarious harvesting weather equated to a £600million reduction in revenue for farmers in comparison with 2023.
We haven’t seen things this bad since the 1980s, and it’s clear we have taken Britain’s food security for granted for far too long. When it comes to the countryside, Labour’s patronising city-boy mentality may well plant a few trees for the climate. But that doesn’t put food in any mouths. And it certainly from the possibility of food shocks, which we are acutely vulnerable to. In fact, one farmer, Jamie Blackett, estimates that drone strikes of two of our major ports would leave us “three meals away from anarchy”. Yikes.
So, what is Labour’s plan? To continue hitting farmers on all sides. The party will press ahead with its deeply unpopular inheritance tax hikes, despite warnings they could . Moreover, the Government is expected to give updates on its timeline for the ‘land use’ framework’, which will undoubtedly re-designate ‘unimportant’ green belt land as grey belt, in order to allow further development.
Is this the best use of farmland given the country’s poor food security? Of course not. But that doesn’t matter. Labour has also announced that it will maintain cuts to the flat payments farmers received as the EU system is phased out. For the upcoming tax year, farming subsidies paid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be cut by a whopping 76%, meaning farms receiving £40,000 would instead only receive £7,200.
And to no one’s surprise, some bloviating Westminster elitists have gone as far as to suggest that because a majority of farmers voted for , they deserve to have this support taken away. You couldn’t make it up. This is the kind of short-sighted, juvenile games being played by the powers that be.
It’s not hard to see why confidence in this Government sinks lower by the day.
With farmers already struggling with razor-thin or no profits, smaller subsidies and the prospect of ruinous inheritance taxes, food prices will undoubtedly rise. How will the Government explain this to already cash-strapped families struggling to make ends meet?
Public anger is palpable; more than 215,000 people have already backed the crusade.
Instead of heeding people’s concerns over such a crucial issue, Labour is more interested in ‘woo-woo’ green nonsense. With more mouths to feed than ever, I struggle to see how we can get out of this mess without a radical policy shift.