Keir Starmer says he would defend his Labour government’s farmer-thumping budget “all day long,” despite one industry leader warning that anger within the community is “like I’ve never experienced before.”
As many as 20,000 UK farmers will descend on Parliament tomorrow to protest a Labour tax hike which threatens to endanger already-struggling family farms and, of course, national food security.
Some are also reportedly planning a coordinated “sewage strike,” which would force other industries to suddenly find new avenues for disposing of millions of tonnes of sewage, placing immense pressure on the government. Farmers use approximately 3.6 million tonnes of sewage sludge on agricultural land.
More than a hundred farmers already protested the Welsh Labour Party conference over the weekend, warning that what they have dubbed the “tractor tax” will mean the end of many family farms. The levy will see farms worth more than £1 million (€1.19 million) having to pay an effective inheritance tax rate of 20%, where they currently pay nothing.
Reform MP Rupert Lowe fumed that the levy will “force thousands of farming families to sell the farm to pay the inheritance tax bill,” adding that while a farm—because of its land—might be worth millions,
It’s worth NOTHING until it’s sold. So when the farm is passed down, and this huge tax bill arrives, what is the family supposed to do? They don’t have hundreds of thousands of pounds sitting in the bank…
Farming is not a lucrative career. It does not make much money. The land is valuable, but the returns are not.
Despite all this, Labour’s Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, insists that the tax is both “fair” and “proportionate,” adding that farmers should simply “check the facts.”
The cabinet minister cannot have been much pleased to find that Labour’s own Baroness Mallalieu, who is also president of the Countryside Alliance, has criticised the fact that “there was no impact assessment done,” and that the changes “smell of incompetence.”
