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'It's the last nail in the coffin': Protesting farmer tells LBC how tax rule change shows 'government isn't listening'
19 November 2024, 07:00 | Updated: 19 November 2024, 07:08
Protesting farmer tells LBC how tax rule change shows 'government isn't listening'
A farmer has told LBC how the inheritance tax changes are "the last nail in the coffin" for many in his struggling industry, as he prepares to take part in a mass protest.
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Harry Middleditch told LBC that farmers have "overcome a lot over the years" - but that the reworking of agricultural property relief was the final straw.
Previously, farming businesses qualified for 100% relief on inheritance tax on agricultural property and business property.
But now the tax is being imposed on farms worth more than £1 million, with an effective tax rate of 20% on assets above the threshold, rather than the normal 40% rate for inheritance tax.
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Many farmers say that they will be forced to sell up to pay the bill when it comes due - a turn of events that could effectively herald the end of the family farm in the UK.
Mr Middleditch said: "We've had to deal with a lot and overcome a lot over the years, and it's the last nail in the coffin, and we're just not being listened to."
And he hailed the influence of Jeremy Clarkson, of Clarkson's Farm fame, who will be among the thousands of farmers marching on Tuesday.
"He's been a brilliant advocate for farming," Mr Middleditch said. "He's brought it into the into the public eye, which is great."
But he said that "the only side that I would say he hasn't done - which is no disrespect to him, it's just the industry as a whole - is he hasn't made it sexy.
"There's no new entrants who's going to come into it and say, 'I want to go into farming to make some money. Because it is as marginal as it is."
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Mr Middleditch used the example of a loaf of bread, telling LBC that if the loaf sells for £1.40, the farmer who grew the wheat that made the bread would see less than 10p.
Alongside the main protest on Tuesday, Tom Bradshaw, the head of the National Farmers' Union will lead a "mass lobby" of MP in Westminster.
Ministers say that the actual threshold before paying inheritance tax could be as much as £3 million, once exemptions for each partner in a couple and for the farm property are taken into account.
But Bradshaw will say that Labour's "shocking policy" was built on "bad data" and was launched without consultation.
The NFU are warning more farmers will be affected by changes to tax relief on their property and land than the Treasury has accounted for.
Official estimates suggest only the richest quarter of landowners will be affected, but the NFU and others say reforms to inheritance tax relief could drag more farmers into paying extra.
"To launch a policy this destructive without speaking to anyone involved in farming beggars belief," Mr Bradshaw will say.
"And let us remember that they promised not to do this when they were wooing the rural vote.
"It's not only been bungled in delivery, it's also nothing short of a stab in the back."
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He will call the budget "a kick in the teeth" following years of changing policy and 18 months of "some of the worst weather on record".
"Far from catching wealthy homeowners with a bit of land, the Treasury's mangling of the data means those people will generally not be affected," he will say.
"It's the farms producing this country's food, which are more valuable assets, that are caught in the eye of the storm.
"The irony that this asset wealth will never become actual wealth unless farms are broken up or sold - kicking the legs out from under Britain's food security - is a bitter one.
"And they will need to be broken up or sold, because farmers simply won't have the money to pay this tax any other way."
He will call on members to tell MPs their stories, and to tell them how it will affect their farms, families, and futures.
"It may be that ministers think today will be 'it', that we'll get tired and they can just wait this out," he will say.
"Well farmers may get tired, but as every one of you in this room knows, they don't give up. We won't give up.
"We won't stop fighting this nationally or locally, in every constituency. If they don't realise that, they really don't know farmers at all."
