Nigel Farage swipes at Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves as they ‘declare war on farms’
Nigel Farage has warned that Labour’s “inheritance tax raid will destroy rural communities” as he blasted Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves for “declaring war on small family farms”.
In Rachel Reeves’s Budget announced last Wednesday, one major change to current rules was the placing of a cap on farmers’ inheritance tax relief at £1million.
Asset-rich but cash-poor farms will have little to no scope to pay inheritance tax bills from farm income, meaning a sale of land and machinery would have to be made to cover the bill when the land owner dies.
As a result, thousands of small family farms are likely to be broken up to the point they are no longer viable, damaging the fabric of the British countryside and worsening the UK’s food security.
In a slickly filmed new video posted on X, the Clacton MP visited one farm in his constituency and met a farmer set to be impacted by the Chancellor’s new Budget.
Speaking to third-generation farmer James Martin, the Reform UK leader said Labour “doesn’t understand” the circumstances of family farms.
Farage said: “So I’ve just arrived at a 300-acre family farm. It’s in its third generation. It’s got 2 or 3 houses, outbuildings, etc..
“The Budget has been just the most massive shock for the farmer here, James Martin.
Nigel Farage swipes at Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves as they ‘declare war on farms’
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“In a moment I’m going to chat to him and he’s in, I have to say, in a pretty distressed state.”
“The big shock in the budget was inheritance tax on farmland, farmland handed down through the generations.
“Elon Musk overnight coming out hard, saying to the Labour Government ‘don’t do this. Leave British farmers alone’.”
He asked Martin: “James, this is a family farm. So you finish up with a situation when you inherit, what will you have to do?”
Martin responded: “I don’t know, well, obviously I’ll have to get some sort of advice from someone.
“Not that you can actually speak to anyone at the minute, because I imagine phone lines are pretty busy at the moment, but obviously something I need to look into.
“I’ve done a sort of rough estimate for myself. Probably just have to stop, to be honest, just so I can keep a roof over the heads and stuff.”
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have declared war on small family farms like this one in my constituency.
Their inheritance tax raid will destroy rural communities.
We need them to think again. pic.twitter.com/XNovBqaTs9
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) November 3, 2024
Farage continued by saying that due to the changes to inheritance tax, Martin would face over £1million in inheritance tax “on a farm that’s basically not making much money”.
Martin continued: “No. Well, we’re 300 acres. Basically a third of it’s miscanthus, which we use a bit for the bedding, the rest goes into a power station, for homes, obviously.
“The other third is cereals. Food for the British public, which because we’re such a small farm, we don’t really have the equipment to do.”
Martin explained his roots as a third-generation farmer, telling how his grandfather would still work the fields well into his 90s.
Martin said: [He] died when he was 92. My dad’s 76. Unfortunately, he has had some bad news. Cancer. So he’s stuck at home, so he doesn’t come over a lot a great deal, but, 300 acres, three properties on the farm.
“Obviously all got ag [agricultural] ties on. I haven’t worked out exactly, but probably looking at half a million for each house.
“We used to be livestock farmers. So, yeah, we’ve got a lot of sheds, so we’re not quite big landowners.
“We are really relatively small farm when you compare yourselves to everyone around here.
“So yeah, the value obviously of the sheds and stuff, because we used to be cattle farmers, which we unfortunately had to stop.
We used to have a herd of 600 cattle here, but the stuff we had to follow, it was very, very hard to actually make some money doing that, especially obviously to support two families.”
Nigel Farage speaks to James Martin about Reeves’s Inheritance tax raid on farms
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He continued: “We work our socks off for it to try and keep all the families running.
“It doesn’t pay enough for me to have a normal life. I’m on a contract with the fire station. I do 120 hours a week on call to make pay up.
“It’s not 120 hours a month. It’s actually 120 hours every single week I’m on call to serve the community.
“Probably could do without it because I’ve obviously got enough on my plate here.”
Farage continued: “This is the irony, isn’t it? Labour policymakers think these are incredibly rich people while they’ve got assets, but they’re more than assets. It’s kind of almost a way of life. And if he was to face in a year or two and an inheritance tax bill of £1million. It’s just not possible, is it?
Martin replied: “No, no, we’ve obviously trying to make ourselves bigger. Tried to beat yourselves like you do. So some of the land we bought, obviously all the 300 acres we got here is actually security for the mortgage.
“So I can’t turn around and say, ‘You know what? We’re going to sell a couple of these fields and give it to the Government?’ Because it’s owned by someone else, the security for the land. So I’d probably have to sell all that first to pay the mortgage off and then sell whatever I got left to pay the inheritance tax, to be honest.”
Farage warned ‘the Government has got this wrong’
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Farage said: “Well, I’ll tell you what, I think the Government has got this wrong.
“They don’t understand the circumstances of family farms like this at all.
“They don’t get it. And I think we’ve got to try and put as much pressure as we can on the Government to change this, because as it is, it’s going to wipe out a huge number of traditional family farms all over this country.
“I think it’s wrong at every level. James, thank you for sharing your story with us. Yeah. Thank you.”
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