Yorkshire Labour Mayor's report reveals more than half of farms do not make a profit
A report commissioned by a Yorkshire Labour Mayor into the challenges farmers are facing has revealed some 52 per cent of farms do not make a profit and proposed changes to inheritance tax could increase the proportion to 61 per cent even with tax planning.
Tom Bradshaw, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) is set to discuss the findings of York and North Yorkshire Mayor David Skaith’s inquiry with the Labour politician and other key stakeholders at the Great Yorkshire Show today.
During a visit with Mr Skaith yesterday to a 200-hectare mixed farm at Appleton Roebuck, near York, Mr Bradshaw said the NFU had accepted the Government was not going to completely backtrack on its inheritance tax proposals, so the union would instead try to influence policy for those with no ability to plan farm succession.
He said: "That is where this retrospective tax is completely inhumane. I don't believe the Government meant to catch those people in the eye of a storm they can't plan their way out of.
"But what it has meant is those people a better off not being here in April next year. That is absolutely where we are focused."
Mr Bradshaw said the Government’s inheritance tax proposals had left a cloud hanging over the industry.
He said: "Until they do something about that, however hard they want to try, they are not going to rebuild the relationship with the wider farming industry."
After taking the Mayor and farmers' leader on a tour of his farm, including a wedding venue that had been developed, James Mills said although diversification was important it "should not be there to prop up food production".
He said: "Food should be a profitable business that allows us to inwardly invest.
"If the inheritance tax policy goes through as proposed there is a risk our business would be stung with a £1m to £1.2m tax bill, which given the best advice up until October was to keep the farm in Mum and Dad's names, would potentially bring us to an end as a business. Paying it back over ten years would eat more than 100 per cent of our profits."
Mr Skaith said the combined authority would respond to the report's findings by working with the Government and bodies such as the NFU and Country Landowners Association to develop ways of driving investment and confidence back into the sector.
He said: "The largest concern that we took away from the report was that over half of farms in York and North Yorkshire are not showing a sustainable profit.
"We have got 7,000 farms in the region and that's the challenge we're facing. We need to make these businesses, which farms are, much more sustainable and profitable, so they can invest over the long-term.”