Shadow farming minister Robbie Moore says farmers' campaign needs to extend beyond agriculture and rural areas

Keighley MP Mr Moore was speaking at a meeting in Ryedale organised by his Conservative colleague, Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake, to canvass farmers’ views.

A packed Bulmer village hall heard while Rachel Reeves’ recent emergency budget had shed little light on the government’s plans for the farming sector, in June a spending review would re-examine the current annual £2.4bn farming budget, which ends next April.

Mr Moore said: “Beyond that I am hearing a lot of rumours that the farming budget is going to be dramatically reduced.”

He said farmers were facing numerous challenges and it had emerged there were 37,000 live Sustainable Farming Incentive applications across England, of which 6,600 had not been processed before the scheme was closed to new applicants.

At a recent Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons Keir Starmer underlined how the Budget had provided £5bn for farming over the next two years, which he said was “a record amount”.

He said: “We have set out a road map for farming, which has been welcomed by farmers, and many thousands of farms have benefited from the farming schemes.”

Mr Moore told the farmers’ meeting while he regularly met with NFU president Tom Bradshaw, CLA president Victoria Vyvyan and George Dunn, chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association “even they at their level have not managed to secure a meeting with the Chancellor”.

He said: “The stark reality of it is there’s only 121 Conservative MPs, there will not be a general election until 2028 or 2029 because Starmer has such a huge majority. The challenge here is to make as many people beyond farming know the impiications of these changes. What we are trying to do in Parliament is take the issue beyond farming.”

Mr Moore said manufacturing businesses in his constituency were facing crippling inheritance tax bills as a result of Labour’s proposed taxes and the agricultural sector needed to get such businesses on side.

One farmer from the Ripon area told the meeting due to the uncertainty surrounding the government’s policies, farmers were “not thinking of investing in anything for a long time”.

He said his business plan had changed as a result of the government’s taxation proposals and that he was considering taking some of his land out of agricultural production and using it for an anaerobic digestion plant and a solar farm.

He said: “My dad is 85 years old and if he dies within the next seven years I’ll have an inheritance tax bill of £1.25m to pay, which is over £100,000 a year. We’ll never make that."

Mr Hollinrake said a group of Ryedale School pupils had written to both him and senior government figures raising concerns about what the MP described as Labour’s “war on rural England”.

He said Labour had “completely got it in for us”. Mr Hollinrake said: This is not coincidental. We’ve got to fight back. It’s not going to be easy. We’re facing a huge task because they have got a huge majority.”

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