Trailer of Truth: Messages to Labour Party conference over way food producers treated
A host of messages and letters have been sent by Yorkshire farmers to the Labour Party conference calling for a transformation in the way it is treating the country’s food producers.
Farmers to Action’s Trailer of Truth gathered farmers’ views from across the region, stopping at auction marts in Thirsk and Skipton, ahead of being displayed outside the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool next week.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has remained stedfast in response to widespread controversy over what protestors have dubbed the Government’s “family farm tax” saying he would defend the Budget "all day long" for taking "tough decisions that were necessary to stabilise our economy".
Under the government's plans, from April 2026, inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1m, which were previously exempt, will be subject to inheritance tax at 20% - half the usual rate.
The government has stated it is striving to support farmers, and had pointed towards spending £2.7bn a year on sustainable food production and nature's recovery, and funding for Environmental Land Management schemes increasing by 150 per cent.
However, farmers and owners of smallholdings attending the rally at Thirsk Auction Mart said they had been left aghast and dismayed by Labour’s attitude towards agriculture.
Among the Trailer of Truth’s drivers across North Yorkshire was Graham Potter, who farms 500 acres at Topcliffe, near Thirsk, who said his biggest concern was the potential £1.5m inheritance tax bill he was facing.
After signing the trailer, Faceby egg farmer and North Yorkshire Council’s climate change champion Conservative David Hugill said the inheritance tax changes had created as big an uproar as any he could remember during his many years representing farmers.
He said: “I saw it coming and just couldn’t believe it was going to happen. I think we struggle to get help, I know I’ve been through it with my own family. Certainly my father very much didn’t want to engage in it. When I tried to get help it was very much ‘we want to speak to your dad, not you.
"My generation are the ones that are going to suffer losing farms or bits of farms or borrowing a big lump of money to pay that tax. Unless you land on something like a wind or solar farm you’re not going to make that sort of money from agricultural production.”
Also attending, Thirsk and Malton MP and Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake, said farmers were facing pressure from every direction due to Labour’s policies, particularly over inheritance tax, which stemmed from Keir Starmer and his colleagues not believing the rural vote was important to them.
He said: “The reason is they don’t want people to inherit things, they don’t want to see multi-generational farmers. But it’s also sustainable farming centres, where they’ve taken £100m out of that, it’s what they’re doing on the ban on burning heather.
"They are trying to completely wreck rural life by the back door, end rural life up here. They are trying to close down British farming by the back door.”