Ive not witnessed despair like this in the countryside since the foot and mouth epidemic, writes ROBERT HARDMAN after Labours inheritance tax raid on family farms. Resistance is stirring...
Theyd all been expecting a certain amount of pain.
Theyd all been expecting a certain amount of pain. What none had envisaged, ahead of last weeks Labour Budget, however, was a systematic assault on their entire way of life.
For that is how the farmers of Britain regard a single, catastrophic clause in Rachel Reeves masterplan for the British economy: a 20 per cent inheritance tax bill on business and agricultural assets over £1 million – kicking in from April 2026.
The best thing a lot of people like us can do for the family is hurry up and pop our clogs, reflects Olive Harrison, 76, over a cup of tea. No one sitting in this kitchen full of farming folk is laughing.
With social media channels spreading (unconfirmed) reports of at least two West Country farming suicides linked to tax worries, this is a very serious point. And it is very hard to quarrel with the analysis of Mrs Harrison.
Jonathan Waring, 59, with daughter Rebecca, son-in-law Richard, left, and their daughters Poppy, 5, and Lily, 3
For the fact is that the average family farm is worth far more than £1 million on paper – even if Ms Reeves insists not – and is almost certainly struggling to stay afloat. Even if a family can make full use of a spouses allowance – thus getting £2 million over the intergenerational line – the new rule is still crippling.
Lets say the farmhouse is worth £500,000, just look outside at the machinery in the yard, says Olives son, Olly Harrison.
He points to his own £506,000 combine harvester parked within sight of the kitchen table, plus two huge tractors. So youve easily hit a million before you even start adding on the land. Since the average farm in this country is 217 acres and farmland is £10,000 an acre, just do the maths.
It means that the first thing any son or daughter inheriting that farm will have to do is flog off at least 20 per cent of it. Show me any other business where you have to sell a fifth of the shop floor before you get started, says Olly, who hopes to hand all this – 350 acres plus 1,000 rented acres – on to his three young children.
He says the only thing keeping his farm afloat is diversification into areas from office space to drying wood chips.
He has become a powerful voice amid the hay bales, having started a daily YouTube blog, which now clocks up big audiences, from the family farm near Widnes on Merseyside. His phone, he says, has not stopped ringing since Budget day.
This weekend I have been talking to farmers all over the country and have also come to an impromptu gathering in the Harrisons kitchen. I can truly say that I have not known the countryside this angry since those epic marches against the Blairite hunting ban – except this goes deeper.
Farmers had been expecting a certain amount of pain. What none had envisaged, ahead of last weeks Labour Budget, however, was a systematic assault on their entire way of life
Lancashire farmers Olive, Tom and Oliver Harrison spoke to Robert Hardman of their anguish
Worse still, I have not witnessed a sense of despair like this since those ghastly pyres lit the night sky during the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001. Mr Harrison points out that incidents of depression and suicide are prevalent in a solitary profession which can suddenly fall apart on the whim of weather or disease.
This summer, he drove that combine harvester on a sponsored drive from John o Groats to Lands End – it took four and a half days – in memory of two farmer friends, David and Andrew, who had taken their own lives.
There are other factors which have both enraged and alarmed farming families, quite apart from the fact that Steve Reed, now Environment Secretary, declared ten months back that Labour had no intention of removing agricultural property relief.
As MP for inner city Streatham, he recently staged a farmyard photo opportunity wearing a £420 pair of designer wellies given to him by Labour fixer Lord Alli. No wonder Mr Reed now sits somewhere between swine fever and potato blight in the country charts. And the timing could not be worse.
Olly Harrison takes me round to the huge shed where he stores crops for the local farming co-operative. Usually, it should be piled to the rafters. He opens the shutters to reveal an expanse of concrete floor with a pitiful heap at the back.
Oliver says the only thing keeping his own farm afloat is diversification into other areas, from office space to drying wood chips
Oliver has become a powerful voice amid the hay bales having started a daily YouTube blog, which now clocks up big audiences, from the family farm near Widnes on Merseyside
Hardman meets farmers in Lancashire following last weeks Budget
We should have had 600 tons of beans this year but we got 94, he says. This has been the worst harvest since 1983. Except, back then, the country had 50 million people to feed. Now, its nearer 70 million. This country has a major food security problem anyway.
Back in his kitchen, I meet a cross-section of farmers from Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire. All are dismayed by the inference that a farm over £1 million makes them wealthy when it will barely wash its face. They also point out that £1 million equates to the state-subsidised pension pot of a middle-ranking public- sector worker, when their own meagre pensions are all tied up in their land anyway.
James Almond, 59, is the fifth generation of the family at Cronton Farm and wants to hand it on to his son. Were small – 150 acres – but my accountant has told me well be hit by this tax, he says. If each generation has to pay 20 per cent, its soon gone. You can only take so many bites of the cherry before you hit the stone.
Brothers Alec and Geoffrey Patten have spent their entire lives working on Higher Shaw Farm but say that it up can no longer support both of them so Geoff has a second job off the farm.
John Shaw grows potatoes on 1,900 acres near Tarporley in Cheshire and wants to hand on to at least one of his teenage sons. We all accept that some cash-rich City types have been buying up farmland as a tax-avoidance scheme but dont confuse them with real farmers who put every penny they earn back into the farm, he says.
Andrew Sewell, 60, is the third generation of farmers in his family and says he would feel a huge amount of guilt if he was the one to let the farm go
Resistance among farmers is now stirring with the NFU planning a march in London on November 19
Hed have no problem if Rachel Reeves slapped a hefty tax on any land sales – especially land sold for development. This is different. After 2026, you cant afford to die.
Danny Humphries is the future – or, at least he was. Aged 27, he grew up on the familys 300 arable acres and rents another 200, with a view to handing on to his children. That aint happening now, he says firmly. We are joined by solicitor Andrew Holden, an expert on rural law, who says several clients are making fast-track plans to put land in trust, though you do have to die in the right order.
Over in Ellerton, East Yorkshire, it is the same message at a gathering of farming families at South Ross Farm, home of Andrew Sewell, 60. The NFU chairman for his part of the county, Mr Sewell works the cattle, poultry and arable farm with his mother, Jean, 82, father Tom, 82, wife Diane, 60 and son Patrick, 30. His brother Mark, 58, also farms with wife Fiona, 57, and their son Harvey, 19.
In the 1960s, this farm sustained six families, says Andrew. Not any more. It barely sustains two because of the squeeze on returns. There is a huge stigma if you are the one to sell off the family firm. I am the third generation of farmers in our family and Id feel a huge amount of guilt if I was the one to let this go.
Diane warns of the toll on entire families. This has a real knock-on effect mentally. Mums are supposed to make everything better, she says. And theres nothing I can do to make this better.
Jonathan Waring, 59, runs Park Farm, in Everingham, near York, with his son, Tom, 31. I expect the sleepless nights will happen when it really sinks in, he says.
Son-in-law Richard Harris, 37, works the farm part-time, while daughter, Rebecca, 33, also works in agriculture and the couple have daughters Poppy, five, and Lily, three. I keep thinking that this isnt happening to us, but the reality is that it is and its going to hit us hard, says Rebecca.
Stuart Craven, 75, and his wife Di, 73, farm sheep at Thornton Lodge Farm with daughter Jenny Smith, 47, her husband Matt, 51, and their daughters Lilia, 17, and Hettie, 15. Its depressing. I think this will affect a lot of people mentally. The longer you think about it the worse it gets, says Stuart.
It is not so bad for me but I worry about the next generation because theres going to be nothing for them. Lilia and Hettie have been involved in every aspect of farm life, especially in the lambing season. You are brought up thinking your whole future will be in farming, even sacrificing schooling, to focus all your energy on the family firm and then you could be left with nothing because it is diminishing, says Lilia.
Resistance is now stirring. The NFU has a march planned in London for November 19. Recent history shows that the countryside counts for little with a metropolitan Labour government sitting on a fat majority. But if you no longer have a farm worth farming, what might you do with that redundant muck-spreader?
