OVER 50,000 farmers and their supporters held a demonstration on Whitehall and outside Downing Street yesterday, demanding an end to the increase in Inheritance Tax and other extra costs that farmers are facing.
Addressing the rally on Whitehall, Olly Harrison, an arable farmer and one of the organisers of the demonstration, said: ‘The numbers here today are totally exceeding what we thought they would be.
‘My family have farmed for 117 years, I am the fifth generation, and my children would be the sixth, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
‘The government must listen. Do they know what it’s like to get up at 4am in the morning and work hard all day long? Do they know what it’s like to milk cows and produce food for the country? No!
‘My family, if this increase is kept, will be bankrupted by this government. We are not rich, as we have often been portrayed in the media. Some of us are barely getting by.
‘And farmworkers, who are also affected by this, many of them are on minimum wage.
‘This family farm tax, that’s what we’re calling it, is about up to 100,000 people being made to live and work in impossible conditions.
‘As it stands, very soon we will have to sell up. Hundreds of others will have to sell up. We cannot stand it any longer. We will carry on the fight. We will do whatever is necessary to win.’
Richard Tamblyn, who was at the demonstration with his son Otto, described the introduction of the tax on farms as ‘an overnight surprise’.
He told News Line: ‘Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced this without knowing the facts and figures. This is a death tax.
‘If an elderly farmer gifts it to his children and doesn’t live for another seven years, the tax is still payable.
‘If it’s sold then you pay Capital Gains Tax.
‘Otto will be the fifth generation to run our farm. Our family have had it since 1860, when my great great grandfather got the land and started farming it.’
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