Farmers warn Labour inheritance tax plans will 'decimate the countryside' at protest

Mr Zeichner attended the conference to announce England’s first Commissioner for the Tenant Farming Sector.

He said: “Food security is national security – and tenant farmers are essential to our country’s food production.”

Outside, farmers gathered to protest plans announced in the Budget to reduce inheritance tax relief for agricultural businesses.

Under the proposals inheritance tax will be charged at 20 per cent on farms worth more than £1 million, in a major reform of agricultural property relief (APR).

Previously farmers were exempt from paying inheritance tax.

The Chancellor has said that in some cases the threshold could in practice be about £3 million, if couples combine their own personal inheritance tax allowances when passing on their land.

Farmer Iain Brown, 50 said: “We’ve taken time out of our day to come here, and I’m needed at home but we can’t take any more. It’s tax, tax, tax.

“The amount of capital you have to have tied up to make a living in farming, there’s no other business like it.

“I can only see family farms disappearing and it’ll be more of the big corporate companies.”

Mr Brown said he was concerned about “getting to the next harvest” because of the acceleration in cuts to delinked payments (formerly Basic Payment Scheme).

“Our cash flow will be seriously stretched going through next spring/summer, until we can get to next harvest and we have to hope.

“It’s bad enough farming with the weather. When you get politicians throwing bombs into the mix, taking away delinked payments overnight because they say that we’re wealthy and we just need to work harder.”

While Rod Smith, 54, who farms Holy Island, in Northumberland, said the Budget was “fundamentally wrong and flawed”.

He explained: “We’ve just had probably two of the worst years weather-wise and the returns in farming have been at an all-time low.

“So the confidence is already low – to have this hammer blow now, the timing was wrong.

“I think the inheritance tax amount is far too low. These guys are working very hard to make minimal returns.”

The government has claimed that very few farmers will be affected by the changes.

Treasury figures state that only 27 per cent of people who claim APR will have a tax liability, however the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Land and Business Association believe that actually two-third of farmers could be impacted.

Yesterday, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds claimed that only 500 farms would be affected.

“We can judge exactly the impact of these changes, because we can look at what the value of claims to date has been,” he said.

“If you look at the number, the total number across the UK of farms that would have been affected by this change, it’s only 500, yes, it’s 500 for the 2026/27 financial year.”

He described Tory criticism as “scaremongering”.

At PMQs, the new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she would reverse the changes to inheritance tax announced in the Budget.

She said: “We have heard him [Sir Keir] repeat the lines on the television, ‘fixing the foundations’, and so on.

“What does he say to farmers who are facing uncertainty about their futures as a result of the increased taxes announced by the Chancellor?”

The Prime Minister responded: “I’m glad she’s raised farmers. Because the Budget last week put £5 billion over the next two years into farming. 

“That’s the single biggest increase, unlike the £300 million which was underspent under the last government.

“But when it comes to inheritance, the vast vast majority of farmers will be unaffected, as she well knows; as they well know.”