Mountaineer's appeal for farming sector to get the public on their side
Chris Brown, who has scaled the highest peaks on each continent, told a packed Back British Farming meeting at Thirsk Auction Mart how his family farming partnership at Baldersby was “really struggling”.
He said: “You shouldn’t say that as a farmer, but we are struggling. We’ve been struggling for a year or two, so don’t blame the previous government, don’t blame this government. We just need the public on our side.”
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Hide AdAbout 180 people attending the meeting heard a panel of politicians from across the political spectrum raise concerns over the government’s proposed changes to inheritance tax alongside calls to get as many people as possible to support British farmers.


While farmers highlighted a range of financial issues, one farmer said if his 85-year-old father died within seven years the family farm would pay more than £1.2m inheritance tax.
Liberal Democrat councillor for Masham, Felicity Cunliffe Lister, said the high turnout to the meeting reflected the degree of concern over agricultural policy. North Yorkshire Council’s Labour group leader Steve Shaw Wright told the meeting "my views are not that of the Labour Party”, and that he would be happy to speak to the government about the issue. Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe farmer Mark Robinson, for Reform UK, added all those producing food faced difficulties “as a consequence of decades and decades, probably more than a hundred years of mismanagement by politicians”.
Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake called on farmers to maintain the pressure on the government, but said the introduction of a grocery code adjudicator who works to help farmers get treated fairly by supermarkets as well as sectoral adjudicators would help farmers get fairer prices.
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Hide AdSpeaking after the meeting, Mr Hollinrake said while the Conservative Party had pledged to reverse Labour’s inheritance tax measures if it was returned to power, some 50 Labour MPs were opposed to the revised levy. He said: “Lots of farmers are under a huge amount of strain and have totally understandable concerns about this policy. Labour seem to think it is a loophole, but it clearly isn’t. It was there for a purpose, keeping family farming in the family for generations.”


Meanwhile, Defra minister Steve Reed issued an apology at the Oxford Farming Conference for the “shock” the inheritance tax changes had caused, but denied the revised levy would force some farms to sell up. Farms were already going bust under the previous government, he said. "It's nothing to do with inheritance tax. It's because the sector isn't profitable."
However, the UK's four farming unions, which includes the NFU, maintain the tax proposals are “badly thought out” and have organised a nationwide Farming Day of Unity, which is set to take place on January 25.
Nevertheless, North Yorkshire Council leader Carl Les said he had written to the Chancellor at the request of a majority of members, calling for the government to consider the circumstances of many elderly land-owning working farmers who have based their tax planning on the presumption of a nil rate applying. The letter also called for the £1m threshold at which inheritance tax is to be charged to be raised and for there to the distinction between owner occupiers of a working asset and those using land to avoid tax to be recognised.
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