Unions hand in Downing Street family farm tax petition as AHDB highlights damage to farmers
28th Jan 2025 / By Alistair Driver
The UK farming unions have handed in a petition to 10 Downing Street signed by more than 270,000 people, urging the government to ditch its ‘devastating family farm tax’.
The petition was handed in by NFU President Tom Bradshaw and NFU Cymru President Aled Jones, on Friday on behalf of the unions, with the presidents of NFU Scotland, Martin Kennedy, and the Ulster Farmers’ Union, William Irvine, unable to travel due to Storm Eowyn.
After decades of tightening margins, record inflation, increased production costs and extreme weather, many farmers and growers are at breaking point and simply will not be able to afford the increased tax bill they will now face, the unions said.
Evidence from the NFU, in consultation with former Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) economists to inform analysis of the impacts of APR reforms on commercial family farms, found that up to 75% of working farms could be affected, with some facing tax bills of £100,000s.
And last week, the OBR produced a new report saying that government changes to inheritance tax (IHT) on farms will likely leave elderly farmers horribly exposed, with no time to manage their way through the new policy.
In a statement, the four presidents of the UK farming unions said: “The public in huge numbers, more than 270,000, have signed this family farm tax petition expressing their anger and frustration at the utter contempt shown by the government for the people who produce the nation’s food. It gives us great strength to know that the public are backing British farming at this critical moment in time.
“The industry is not taking this lying down. The government has woken a sleeping giant, as our mass lobby of MPs in Westminster and the farmer led rally in Whitehall have demonstrated.”
The petition was handed in after virtually all the UK’s major supermarkets delivered statements backing the NFU’s call for the family farm tax to halted, while its true impact is properly investigated.
Meanwhile new independent analysis from AHDB shows more than three-quarters of farms in England and Scotland of 50 hectares or more in size will be affected by the planned changes to Inheritance Tax (IHT).
It has calculated that 42,204 out of 54,938 farms (76.8%) across the two nations will be impacted by the new tax rules, which will see the full 100% relief from Inheritance Tax restricted to the first £1m of combined agricultural and business property, from April 2026.
The NFU met todau and voted overwhelmingly today to stage a ‘campaign moment’ in London in February as part of its drive to halt the Family Farm Tax, and also to support a planned rally proposed by a group of farmers in the capital in March.
“The campaign moment would be the latest part of the NFU’s campaign and will be a strong emotional and visual way of highlighting the way Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s policy on inheritance tax on farms will snatch away the next generation’s chance to produce Britain’s food, and will coincide with the annual NFU Conference, this year being held in London,” the NFU said..
NFU Council also agreed overwhelmingly that the organisation should also support a proposed rally in London in March, if it goes ahead, encouraging members to attend and helping organisers of that event by using the NFU’s communications power to publicise the event on their behalf.