Fenland farming leader's stark warning over future after government's refusal to compromise on family farm tax
A Cambridgeshire farming leader said the family farm tax poses a major threat to national food security and the rural economy after the government bluntly refused any suggestion of a compromise during a meeting this week.
The stark warning comes after Exchequer Secretary James Murray and Food Security Minister Daniel Zeichner called in representatives from across the farming sector, including the NFU, only to tell them the government had no interest in compromise.
The meeting was held on Tuesday as the NFU runs the Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign in opposition to government’s planned changes to inheritance tax, announced in the Autumn Budget.
NFU Cambridgeshire Chair Alison Morris, an arable farmer based near March, said: “The meeting with the Treasury this week showed the government is currently unwilling to listen to reasoned argument and just want to push through with this ill-thought-out and hugely damaging policy without holding it up to proper scrutiny and consultation.
“Our President Tom Bradshaw went into the meeting with a well-thought-out alternative to the government’s current inheritance tax proposal.
“This would raise significant income for the government and tackle tax avoidance, which the current proposals do not achieve, without devastating the rural economy, threatening national food security or threatening the future of family farms.
“The Office for Budget Responsibility has already highlighted how the government’s inheritance tax plans leave elderly farmers horrifically exposed, with no time to plan for the future. The fact the government is seemingly willing to ignore this is utterly shameful.
“Leading supermarkets have reiterated the NFU’s concerns over the threat to national food security. But they seem unwilling to listen.
“The government claimed it is prioritising economic growth, but these inheritance tax proposals will only devastate the rural economy.”
The Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign is calling on the government to reconsider its planned changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief.
The NFU says the government is working off the wrong figures and has miscalculated the impact of its planned changes, with concerns they could force many small and medium-sized family farms out of business.
There are also major concerns about the impact on the wider rural economy and the environment.
Miss Morris said: “The Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign is not over. We will not stop until this policy is held up to proper scrutiny and consultation, with the next step being NFU Conference in London next week.
“I urge all farmers and members of the public who value their farmers and growers in Cambridgeshire to write to their MPs, urging them to push for the government to pause this damaging inheritance tax policy and properly engage with us.”
Speaking after the meeting, NFU President Tom Bradshaw said: “Disappointed doesn’t cover how I feel. We have repeated our concerns about the impact on farming families; they don’t care. On the impact on families who can’t afford vast tax bills coming their way on the death of a loved one; they don’t care. On the elderly – the most vulnerable people in our farming community – who feel they are now a burden on their family; they don’t care.
“This morally bankrupt position sits with this government, and, without change, ministers will reap the consequences.
“We went into this meeting fully understanding the fiscal hole this government must plug, and we went into this meeting to offer a solution, a solution which has been suggested by other tax experts where the inheritance tax policy is based on a claw back mechanism.
“Put simply, farmers don’t get money when they inherit, they get the farm, the business asset, and often the debt. Any money they do get, they get when they sell.
“Our suggestion, which is almost revenue neutral meaning the Chancellor gets her planned income, is that if an inherited farm is sold then inheritance tax gets paid. Crucially, this would allow family farms that want to continue to produce the nation’s food to do so, while giving the Treasury what it wants.”
