LONDON: British farmers lined up tractors outside parliament in London on Wednesday, in protest over the government’s plan to impose an inheritance tax for agricultural businesses. It marks the latest angry objection by farmers in response to changes in the Labour government’s October budget, which they say threatens the agricultural sector and food production.
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” read protestors’ banners as dozens of tractors lined Parliament Square in the centre of the British capital. “The inheritance tax is the final straw,” William Pickering, 44, who owns a farm in Kent, told AFP.
“We’re expecting (the government) to... realise they’ve made a massive mistake,” he added, saying he is ready to come back and protest until the plans are scrapped. Around 10,000 people gathered in London last month over the proposed tax changes.
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.
“The vast majority of farmers will not be affected”, Prime Minister Keir Starmer assured members of parliament on Wednesday. “We will put £5 billion into agriculture over the next two years, that’s a record number under the budget”, he said.
British farmers have been struggling in recent years due to a lack of funding and post-Brexit labour shortages.
Alongside Pickering, his 16-year-old daughter Grace said she fears she will not be able to take over the family farm due to the potential tax bill.
“We would have to sell fields and then the farm wouldn’t be viable because there wouldn’t be enough land to farm on,” she explained. 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 bequeathed after a death.
From April 2026, however, total exemption from death duties will only apply to the first £1 million ($1.27 million) of combined agricultural and business property.
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