Family farms sit at the heart of Britain’s food production, which along with drink makes up the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, yet unbelievably Labour has chosen to undermine their future security with its “tractor tax” in its “spiteful” budget.
Three-quarters of food grown in this country is estimated to come from family farm businesses that will be directly hit by Labour’s new plan to apply inheritance tax to all farms worth more than £1million. This amounts to some 70,000 farms in total.
The Government may dispute that figure but the National Farmers’ Union has number-crunched the data directly from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The NFU is, quite rightly, up in arms over the threat to its members’ livelihoods. Farms that have belonged to families for generations now face being broken up to pay for death duties, further diminishing their capacity to generate the crops and animals that we need for our nation’s food security.
Yet once again in their greed for our tax money, Labour is discouraging home production in exchange for importing more goods from abroad. And there is a delicious irony to a decision to clock up unnecessary extra miles from a Government that is otherwise hellbent on implementing its disastrous net zero crusade.
It doesn’t help that Environment Secretary Steve Reed is a south London townie who thinks it’s fine to put the boot in while wearing £400 wellies gifted by Lord Alli. Clearly he doesn’t know the first thing about farmers or agriculture.
Reed has previously spoken of “the need to transition farming to a more nature-positive model of farming”. In reality, this means reducing food production as fields are either rewilded or filled with solar panels. Neither helps us produce home-grown food, which surely is the best way to reduce our carbon emissions and ensure higher standards of production.
Labour must wake up and realise this is a battle it cannot and should not win.
And the fightback has already started.
The Daily Express yesterday launched its crusade to Save Britain’s Family Farms in a perfectly timed move offering the public the chance to back the rural communities that represent our national character.
It follows the No Farmers No Food campaign group, which has so far attracted over 100,000 supporters. There are also plans for farmers to take on Westminster in a demonstration later this month on November 19.
Inventor and farmer Sir James Dyson sees Labour’s cruel tax as part of a broader attack on Britain’s enterprise. Speaking this week he said “Rachel Reeves is killing off established family businesses, and any incentive to start new ones, with her 20% Family Death Tax, levied each time a family business passes a generation.
He added: “The very fabric of our economy is being ripped apart. Think of the jobs for ‘working people’ that will be lost – or never created.”
Even US tech billionaire Elon Musk can see the fatal flaw in UK policy. “We should leave the farmers alone,” he insists. “We [owe] farmers immense gratitude for making the food on our tables.”
The lie that Labour is not levying taxes on “working people” has already been exposed by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which estimates that 76% of the recent rise in employers’ National Insurance will be passed on to workers through lower wages. That’s before you factor in the higher prices farmers and other manufacturers will be forced to charge, adding to price inflation and making them less competitive with imports.
Labour’s unjust move reveals how ignorant Prime Minister Starmer and his socialist pals are about the interconnectivity of the economy and how one increase can spread out across the whole system.
The fundamental problem is that Labour is the party of the insatiable public sector, dedicated to whacking up taxes on private business to reward its gold-plated clients. Its deluded politicians cannot seem to fathom that it is economic growth which generates taxes in conjunction with a business friendly environment.
It was bad enough under the Tories but Labour is simply doubling down on impoverishing our nation, hitting both farming and industry hard with higher levies, more regulation and more expensive energy just when we need to be helping all our core producers.
The new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch must underline how important it is to let farmers and other businesses get on with their essential work.
Family farms are too important to the well-being of our countryside to be sacrificed to the money pit that is Labour’s ever fatter government. Helping them helps us look after ourselves in an ever more challenging world.
