Budget 2025 Farmer Protest Police Tried To Cancel, Labour's Family Farm Tax Will Aid BlackRock Chums

Описание: BBC ITV Sky News hardly covered the Farmers Budget protest on Wednesday.
Farms Not Factories https://farmsnotfactories.org/ did - bless them!

http://tlio.org.uk

https://politicsthisweek.gn.apc.org/2...

Budget 2025 Westminster Farmers Protest Labour Destroying Family Farms For Blackrock's Supermarkets, Police Try To Cancel Demo #nofarmersnofood

'Rachel Reeves never cared about us farmers but this beggars belief'

EXCLUSIVE: Farmers who could be hit by new tax burdens have slammed Labour for "targeting the people who are trying to feed the nation".

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/214...

UK farmers are up in arms over tax hikes in Rachel Reeves's second Budget and the arrest of protesters in Westminster while she was delivering the statement.

Ms Reeves's plan to levy a 20% inheritance rate on agricultural land and businesses worth over £1million has become a political flashpoint for an industry grappling with rising costs, climate impacts and tough market conditions. The Express has called for a U-turn on the Family Farm Tax, warning that it could make it impossible for farmland to be passed down through generations.

Farmers including Russel Abbott, 42, had planned to voice their opposition to the measures, set to be enforced next April, in the latest of a series of tractor demonstrations in London on Wednesday, coinciding with Ms Reeves's second Budget, which they feared could "further devastate" the sector.

The Chancellor announced a minor change to the inheritance tax (IHT) policy in her fiscal statement, enabling farmers who are married or have deceased spouses to transfer their allowances to one another. But she also hiked the national minimum wage, impacting employers across the board, included dairy drinks in her "sugar tax" and dragged some farmers above the threshold for her "mansion tax" grab.

Significantly, she refused to backpedal on the controversial IHT measures and farmers like Mr Abbott, who rose early on Wednesday morning to travel hours across the country to London, were banned from doing so with just a few hours notice, leading to several arrests and at least two tractors seized.

Mr Abbott, a third-generation farmer from Tattingstone, Suffolk, has worked alongside his 81-year-old father on the 200-acre family estate for years and is afraid an annual tax bill in excess of £50,000 after his dad's death will cripple the business, which has been known to turn a profit of less than £30,000 a year.

"So many of us are angry with Rachel Reeves's decisions and the things she's pushed on us," he told the Express. "It's been a long road and it upsets me to think the government still isn't listening and doesn't seem to care. The release between spouses won't help me at all, or a lot of other people."

The 42-year-old set off from Cragg Pitt Farm at around 4:30am on Wednesday after turning in early and missing the Metropolitan Police's last-minute warning to protesters not to attend. He was well on the way to London before turning on the radio and discovering that it had been cancelled.

"I was really frustrated, because I know the people who organised it, and they put so much work and effort in," he said. "Everything was legal and in place. But when I called up the organisers, they said people were still coming, so of course we didn't turn around."

"It's wrong to ignore us and to arrest us, but it's also wrong not to look after people who are trying to save money and to raise taxes beyond the cost-of-living for the public," he added. "It's wrong to attack savings in ISAs. We pay taxes when we get our wages, we pay taxes when we fill our cars up, when we eat and when we want to stay warm. Then we die, and they make us pay taxes again. The country's in a mess."

Ian Lomas, 57, a dairy farmer from Matlock, Derbyshire, whose family have looked after 500-acre Griffe Walk Farm since 1952, also criticised Labour's failure to acknowledge existential warnings about the agricultural sector, describing it as intentional targeting of "people who are trying to feed the nation".

He suggested the minor amendment to IHT "discriminates against unmarried people" and "will do nothing towards ensuring succession without huge financial costs".

"People look at us and think we've got millions of pounds tied up in land," he said. "But my dad has always likened it to a window cleaner and his ladders. Without them, he can't do his job. It would make no difference to us if the farm was valued at £1 an acre. We only borrow it from the next generation - it's a cliche, but we really are asset rich and cash poor."

The inclusion of packaged milk drinks in Labour's "sugar tax" on soft drinks could also damage business for dairy farms, Mr Lomas said, exacerbating downward pressure on prices...