ONE thousand tractors spread all the way up Whitehall and beyond in a show of strength by tens of thousands of angry farmers yesterday, determined to force the Labour government to Halt the Family Farming Tax.
The event, organised by Save British Farming, is the third time farmers have rallied in the capital since chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the imposition of Inheritance Tax on small farms.
The demonstration occurred as MPs in the House of Commons debated an e-petition with more than 148,000 signatures calling to keep the current inheritance tax exemptions for working farms.
Richard Hartley and his sister Vanessa, who had travelled from the Cotswolds by tractor, told News Line: ‘We left the Cotswolds at 6.00am today to come here, because we are completely and utterly opposed to the inheritance tax which the government wants to bring in.
‘We have had seven generations of family farming, with a future generation to take over from us. Because of this we daren’t spend any money to improve the farm. We care about the land. We don’t want big corporations taking it over and milking it for all it’s worth.’
Myra, a veterinary surgeon from Oxted in Surrey, said: ‘It is a very unfair tax. Farmers in general are asset rich and cash poor, so they will end up selling some assets to pay this, which will make the farm less profitable. Some will become unviable. It won’t even raise much for the Treasury. It must be stopped.’
Liz Webster, from Save British Farming, the organisers of yesterday’s demonstration, said: ‘We’re communicating with the country because we want the country to understand what it means to them if we lose our farms.
‘We’re telling a story and every time we come out we’re communicating to the public that whether you live in the city or the countryside you rely on a farmer for food and if the government continue with these policies we will really be in trouble for food.
‘If you look at it from a food security point of view there isn’t enough money in there to pay huge inheritance taxbills and what will happen is that our food system will collapse and we won’t have enoughfood.
‘That is what people need to think about. This is about a food system that we all rely on. If you remember, during Covid, we all came out clapping for farmers because we need food.
‘That’s what this government don’t seem to recognise and we’re trying to communicate to them that if we don’t have enough food in this country there will be major problems.
‘The Inheritance Tax, if it continues for next April, is going to cause a humanitarian crisis.
Many elderly farmers know that they can only save their family farm by not being alive after that deadline and that is a really heartbreaking and terrifying reality.
‘And that’s why so many farmers are exercised, because we want to look after our farming family, because we are a community.’