British farmers protest in London over inheritance tax change

Farmers in tractors wait at traffic lights outside of the Houses of Parliament in London on November 19, 2024, during a protest against inheritance tax rules for land ownership. [AFP]

British farmers massed in London on Tuesday, calling on the Labour government to scrap plans to change inheritance tax rules for land ownership, which they say threatens the agriculture sector and food production.

 Tractors with banners calling the move "the final straw" for the beleaguered sector drove around Parliament Square, while farmers lobbied lawmakers and others called for Prime Minister Keir Starmer's administration to think again.

 "We've brought thousands of farmers to London to explain to the government that farmers are food producers, and this ludicrous budget is going to put us all out of business," farmer Olly Harrison told AFP from the protests.

 "Farmers just simply will pack up... it's just too much for us -- we've just had enough."

 Although on a smaller scale, the demonstrations are reminiscent of protests when an earlier Labour government incensed rural communities in the early 2000s with a plan to ban foxhunting with dogs in England and Wales.

 In 2002, countryside campaigners estimated that 400,000 people marched through London to oppose the move.

 National Farmers Union president Tom Bradshaw, said the latest protests would continue for as long as it takes.

 "They (the government) cannot have a policy in place which has such disastrous human impacts and think we're going to go quiet," he told Sky News television.

  - Contested impact -

 Bradshaw met Environment Secretary Steve Reed on Monday and said afterwards he had shown a "level of understanding".

 But both sides appear to be digging in, as the new Labour government tries to claw back what it says is a £22-billion ($28-billion) blackhole in public finances left by the last Conservative administration.

 In France and other European countries farmers have also been protesting over increased pressure on their revenue.

 Central to the row in Britain, where farmers have been struggling due to lack of funding and post-Brexit labour shortages, is how farms could be taxed.

 Farming businesses previously qualified for 100-percent relief on inheritance tax on agricultural and business property, reducing the amounts that farmers and landowners pay when farmland is passed on after a death.

 From April 6, 2026, however, total exemption from death duties will only apply to the first £1 million ($1.27 million) of combined agricultural and business property.

 Any estate valued above that will have to pay a 20-percent tax rate -- half the standard applied to other land and property -- over 10 years.

 The government maintains the actual threshold before paying inheritance tax could be as much as £3 million ($3.8 million), once exemptions for each partner in a couple and for the farm property are taken into account.

 Starmer said Monday "the vast majority of farms" will not be affected.

  - 'Storm' -

 But the NFU insists that more farms may have to pay the tax when land, property and equipment are taken into account. It points to environment ministry figures that show that 66 percent of farm businesses in England have a net value of more than £1 million.

 "Our numbers suggest that 75 percent of commercial farms, those farms producing this country's food, are caught in the eye of this storm," said Bradshaw.

 Farmers fear the financial burden will force farms to be broken up and sold as result of the policy, hitting food production and supply.

 Some 1,800 farmers lobbied MPs in London on Tuesday, winning support from the opposition Conservative party. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claimed Labour "clearly doesn't understand or care about rural communities".

 Tim Farron, environment spokesman for the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, said direct agricultural subsidies had fallen by 20 percent in real terms since 2015, and 8,100 farms were lost across the country in 2023.