NFU president reveals private meeting with Prime Minister over Inheritance Tax

The impact of changes to  taxes on farms was discussed, alongside a number of other topics including food security, trade and farming and growing in the UK more widely at a meeting yesterday. 

Mr Bradshaw confirmed: “I welcome the Prime Minister asking to hear directly about farmers’ concerns, and I am grateful to him for taking the time to do so. 

"I hope we can work together towards a resolution on this issue.” 

In his regular blog on https://www.nfuonline.com/, Mr Bradshaw added: "We have been able to present our side of the discussion of what the changes to Agriculture Property Relief and Business Property Relief are going to mean for our futures. 

"The Prime Minister was very much in listening mode and I hope he is able to act on what he has heard and understand that when we talk about the very real human impacts,  when we talk about the viability of family farms, and the low returns from producing the country’s food, these are all conversations we picked up." 

Yesterday it was revealed  more than 250,000 people have backed the National Farmers' Union's (NFU) campaign to reverse Labour's agriculture inheritance tax reforms. 

Labour has been caught up in a wave of criticism over its announcement in the October Budget that agricultural assets worth more than £1 million would no longer be exempt from Inheritance Tax.

Under plans announced in the Budget, Inheritance Tax will be charged at 20 per cent on agricultural assets above £1 million, including livestock, farmhouses, sheds and machinery, although Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said that in some cases the threshold could in practice be about £3 million.

The decision on Inheritance Tax, described by some as 'disastrous' and a 'death knell', has  sparked fury and warnings it will kill off farms that have been in families for generations, as well as risking national food security. 

The NFU  organised a mass lobby on November 19, where farmers met with their MPs in Parliament, urging them to ask for changes to Agriculture Property Relief and Business Property Relief, announced in the Budget, to be overturned.

There were also separate farmer  protests in the capital, with 13,000 farmers and supporters rallying in central London. 

The Environment Secretary said he heard the “anguish” of the countryside after thousands of farmers protested against the Budget.

Speaking to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), Steve Reed said he wanted to support farmers, as he announced a 25-year farming road map to help the sector move to more environmentally and financially sustainable models of agriculture.

But in his speech he also reiterated the Government’s insistence that the vast majority of farming families would not be affected by the inheritance tax changes, in the face of analysis by the CLA that 70,000 UK farms could face paying the tax over the coming years.

“The truth is hard data, independently verified, shows that the vast majority of claimants will still pay nothing, but the reforms will raise money that will help fix the public services that rural and farming communities rely on just as much as anyone else in the country,” he said.

He said he was “struck” by how many people described the Budget issues that brought them out onto the streets of London as “the final straw”.

“Those straws have been piling up for many decades now, they are the frustrations of rural communities across Britain who feel misunderstood, neglected and frankly disrespected," he said. 

“This isn’t just about tax or even just about farming, important though those things are, it is about a whole community demanding to be treated with respect.”

And he said: “I heard the anguish of the countryside on the streets of London.  We may not agree over the inheritance tax changes, but this Government is determined to listen to rural Britain and end its long decline.

“We are investing £5 billion in sustainable food production to benefit farming, rebuilding our shattered public services that rural communities rely on, fixing the foundations of our broken rural economies so they can grow again sustainably for decades into the future,” he insisted.

Mr Reed announced a farmer-led 25-year farming road map, which he said would be the “most forward-looking plan for farming in our country’s history, with a focus on making farming and food production more profitable in the decades to come”.

He said it would not tell farmers what to do, but would be farmer-led so they can tell Government what they need to make a success of the transition to environmentally and financially sustainable farming.