We are ex-farmers. We now live happily in this ancient market town in the middle of some of the best farming land in the area, so it was a given that we would today support the farmer’s march against the ill-thought through government policy of 20% inheritance tax (IHT) on land. It is not that we are keen for city slickers to push up land values by buying land for tax exemption; far from it. It can’t be difficult to tax them without killing off traditional landowners and farmers.
It wasn’t exactly sparrows when we got up, but it was a good game to spot other fellow marchers on the train, and we were certainly up in time to join a sea of khaki-ish greens and browns, and gumboots, covered in their attendant mud and other substances, up Whitehall to about the mid-way point where there was a huge covered wagon slewed across the road, properly electrified for the speakers.
Some speeches were bumbling and humbling by the ordinary small farmer, and some uplifting and very good. But they were all short. Ed Davey (Lib Dems) came rabble-rousing saying everything we all wanted to hear. Kemi (Con) was also ridiculously good, saying she “had our backs’” and would reverse the policy asap. Then, (sorry politicians and farmers) arrived the patron saint of farming and free speech, Jeremy Clarkson…
Needless to say, he was excellent. He had a very bad back and shouldn’t have been there at all, and he said he was “off his tits on painkillers”. But he was measured and got resounding responses and cheers, pointing out a few painfully obvious financial and agricultural facts to our wonderful chancellor. For instance, you may be able to buy an elderly Honda Jazz for a couple of thousand (I did!) but that a medium tractor capable of proper land work, was a couple of hundred thousand. And of course, you can buy an imported chicken for supper for twopence ha’penny, but that it tastes of chlorine, like a swimming pool with a beak.
Jeremy ended with a very considered and quiet plea for the government to think this rushed policy through again, and be big enough to admit that they may just have made a mistake and reverse it.
In these warmongering times, you might think that even the most amateur government would feel that the means to food security should be treasured rather than angered.
Throughout all this emotional turmoil (I found myself crying needlessly at a stupid tractor!), it was raining steadily. Nothing drenching, but quite wetting after an hour or two. Nothing to farmers, of course, who work in all weathers and temperatures. Unlike the majority, who are tucked up cosily in a warm office tippy-tapping on a keyboard with a steaming latte at their elbow.
Image Credits: Col Everett .
Unlike the majority who have to pay inheritance tax. Read the room.
How arrogant of you! Some people get up at the crack of dawn to look after people, work their fingers to the bone so that they can buy a home to hopefully leave their children.
Their kids will have to pay 40% tax on their parents hard work. Yours will pay 20%. Their tax will not start at a massively high level approaching £3 million. They will have to pay their tax immediately, you will have 10 years!
Didn’t see farmers on the streets when Boris threw away their subsidies leaving the EU, or when Liz Truss destroyed our economy putting up every cost to farmers. This tax increase will affect very few farmers, far less than the numbers that turned out to protest in London, so why were you all there?
Finally, Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies said “What the budget did was reduce the amount of additional relief that farmers get on agricultural land. It still means they’ll be significantly more generously treated than the rest of us and still more generously treated actually, than farms used to be in decades past”…..
Anyone would think that farmers are holding the country to ransom over this issue. They don’t have the luxury of going on strike or withholding their produce. If they did it would be certain ruin in a very short time.
Unlike the train drivers or government sector employed, they still need to get up in the morning and tend to animals and sew crops for next years harvest ( If they are lucky it might produce a profit).
Losing the EU subsidies was bad enough and most farmers were promised a more sustainable alternative. Mainly set up to benefit the environment, but that doesn’t produce food.
If the people of this country want good quality cheap food there needs to be a commitment.
Believe it or not farmers are employers of people also. Not to mention professionals like vets, accountants, bankers and land agents, who they have to use to sort out all the highly complicated rules and regulations farmers have to follow in order to just to farm.
May be Mr. Archer should try setting up as a farmer himself and see how he gets on.
And where were the farmers when the last government lost them tens of thousands of pounds in EU subsidies and didn’t replace them??? Clarkson kept bemoaning the farmers lot on his TV show but did he march about this in London along with his new farming pals? NO he didn’t. Why? Because his Tory friends were in power.
Aaaaah, the politics of envy.
The flashing £ signs are obscuring the argument. The concept of keeping farms out of IHT was introduced forty years ago I believe, to stop them being broken up and becoming non-viable. Principally because they produce food, which at the last count I understood all of us to need.
In the pursuit of ‘fairness’ the ‘end justifies the means’ team will not be happy until we all have to survive on expensive bone stew, served with watery cabbage soup.
Ho-hum, well at least we will all be equal.
Historically there was understandably some leeway allowed to farmers of small scale farms to exempt them from inheritance tax. However now, sadly, rich landowners (Nigel Farage, Jeremy Clarkson et al who can spot a bandwagon) call themselves”farmers” in order to joyously avoid contributing their fair share towards tax. Let’s be honest, small scale farms still need protection, rich landowners should be classed as something else . Suggestions welcome.
Neil Archer misses the point completely where farming differs from the other hard working people who get up at dawn to look after people and work their fingers to the bone so they can buy a home to hopefully leave their children. These wonderful people who work for the NHS or as Carers or even deliver the Mail will knock off after their shift and will unlikely work more than 5 consecutive days.
The biggest risk they face is unemployment or sickness so they can no longer have enough income to pay a mortgage.
Farming of all types is very long term, the risks from weather, pests and diseases are all borne by the farmer. A crop planted in this very wet autumn won’t be harvested until next summer, many crops planted this autumn have failed due to the weather.
Ewes being put to the ram now will hopefully produce a lamb next April, however again the weather and disease risk have massive effects on a successful lambing next Spring. BTV3 (Bluetongue strain 3) is a great concern as in Europe up to 40% of the sheep have died or are no longer productive. Bluetongue is a tropical disease that arrives in Holland from Africa in Flowers and plants that come into Schipol so people can have roses all the year round!
Schmallenberg another insect borne disease caused huge losses in unviable lambs last Spring, that and the weather has reduced the number of lambs by almost 2 million. An economic hit of around £250 million.
My cows put to the Bull back in May won’t produce a calf until February 2025, that calf won’t be sold for beef until 2027.
We are a family business and work 7 days a week looking after our livestock, this means being on call 24 hours a day. Last week someone let our cattle out of a field near Rye Harbour and I was called out at 2am to get them back.
Calving and lambing time is a 24 hour operation.
That is why farming is different and charging IHT on working farms that have a very low level of profitability, around 0.5 to 1.0% on capital would just mean less farmers and less food.
Anyone running their own business is on call 24/7. Your argument doesn’t stand.
Neither does your response. Try telling a flock of sheep they can’t lamb until midday on Monday so that you can take the weekend off. Clearly you have no idea how a small farm has to operate.
Good on you Clifford.
That’s typical of the general public today.
Go to the supermarket pick up some meat.
Not a Clue how it got there.