“This lake was my family farm a few days ago” said Henry last year as we stood looking out at a vast area of water that Storm Babet had thrown onto prime agricultural land in my Lincolnshire constituency. This scene, and the other flooded farms I visited that day, highlighted some of the challenges that farmers face and over which they have no control, from catastrophic weather to international commodity price inflation.
Those few words hinted at the emotional toll that this vocation can take on the people who grow our food for us. Farmers pride themselves on their resilience – they know the knocks and are raised from the cradle to always look for a Plan B – but we must not take them or their livelihoods for granted.
Sadly, this is a serious mistake that Labour has made in their Budget. Their lack of understanding of the realities of farming was revealed in the crass decision to slash years of careful tax policy to keep family farms intact and protected from inheritance tax. By removing agricultural and business property reliefs, and setting an artificially low threshold, they have consigned family farms and businesses to being sold off and split up as families cannot afford massive tax bills.
Steve Reed, MP for Croydon and the current Defra Secretary, say only 500 farms a year will be affected because the tax is to be charged on farms worth over £1 million. But, in doing so, he betrays a basic lack of knowledge about the countryside.
The price of a hectare on paper does not mean that the farmer is cash-rich. Farmers and their families have to absorb price and supply chain shocks, as well as risks such as crop or livestock diseases, and their farm properties may be decades or even centuries old. Their salaries and their savings may be modest. And so that figure of £1 million may seem a lot in a ministerial policy paper but it will not stretch very far on the ground in many parts of this crowded island where land and homes are expensive.
It is also puzzling as, before the election, Labour ruled out changing this policy, describing such a suggestion as “desperate nonsense”. Why did they say one thing before the election and now do the opposite? And when the Defra Secretary wrote in The Telegraph recently that “food security is national security”, did he know of his Chancellor’s plan to risk family farms?
Much like Labour’s jobs tax or their 1970s-style union laws, Labour ministers either do not care about the consequences of their policies, or just have not thought them through. If farmers have to set aside money for a potential tax raid rather than investing in the farm, it will no doubt impact food production, increase prices and make British farmers less competitive.
It will make us more reliant on imports, just at the exact time we should be doing the opposite. Despite the chorus of opposition from the food industry, ministers still seem intent on ignoring the experts and dogmatically ploughing on.
A year later, the floodwaters have receded from Henry’s farm but the ground is soggy and we will all be watching the winter weather as closely as the winter wheat. I am proud to represent a highly productive agricultural constituency in Lincolnshire, the bread basket of our country. It is why I asked Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative Party, to appoint me as shadow secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs, to support our rural and coastal communities and the environment. I will pull my (old) Hunter boots on and hold this socialist, city-dwelling government to account to protect our farms of the future.
