War of words continues between the government and farming union over controversial IHT changes
The NFU has distanced itself from disruptive inheritance tax (IHT) protests in Buckinghamshire.
The protest by a group of farmers forced Prime Minister Keir Starmer to leave a visit to a housing development early. In response, Starmer underlined that to balance the books the government has had to take “tough but right decisions” on issues such as ending tax breaks for farmers.
“These are political choices, but what you can’t have is interest rates coming down, the growth we need in economy, waiting lists coming down, and maintain the tax break for farmers,” he told Sky News. “Do people want the economy to start working for everyone, or do we want to keep tax breaks for farmers? We can’t have both.”
In response, NFU president Tom Bradshaw stressed that the protest was not an NFU-organised event. “However high feelings are running in the farming community, today’s actions by a group which deliberately disrupted a major speech by the Prime Minister were misjudged and, clearly, have been massively counter-productive,” he said.
“Since last October, the NFU has been leading a campaign to mitigate the damaging and inhumane impacts of the proposed changes to inheritance tax on farms, building independent evidence, huge public support and political backing across Parliament.”
Bradshaw took umbrage with Starmer’s description of Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) as “a tax break for farmers”, stressing instead that they are policies designed to ensure family farms can stay in business and enable them to deliver for the nation.
”It’s also not reasonable to suggest that raising between nothing and £500 million – the varying estimates of what the new tax will bring in – will determine the future of the NHS or UK schools,” he added.
“The NFU has spent months trying to meet the Chancellor, more recently to share and discuss what we believe is a revenue-neutral change to the family farm tax which helps the government in its aim of raising money, but also protects family farms and removes the elderly from the eye of this storm. We have meetings with the Exchequer Secretary next week where we hope that, despite today’s events, he will welcome and consider these proposals properly.
“Events like today’s are not the way to achieve policy change. The NFU represents 44,000 farming businesses in England and Wales and we will speak with their voices next week – calmly and constructively.”
