As farmers prepare for yet another day of demonstrations, GB News asks its members if Prime Minister now needs to take concerns about the tractor tax seriously.
The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that farmers will descend on Whitehall at 10am today, just weeks after thousands turned up to demonstrate against Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax raid.
Farmers from as far as Exmoor, Shropshire, Somerset will head down to the capital in the early hours of the morning, with motorists already warned about potential travel disruption.
Protesters will also gather in other major UK cities, including Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.
Farmers Guide has claimed that it is a “tractor-only protest”, meaning other vehicles such as pick-up trucks are asked not to join.
The “RIP British Farming” protests are centred around reforms to agricultural property relief (APR) to inheritance tax, which applies when farmers and landowners pass farmland to the next generation.
Under the changes, the full 100 per cent relief from inheritance tax will be restricted to the first £1million of combined agricultural and business property relief, above which landowners will pay inheritance tax at 20 per cent, compared with 40 per cent on other estates.
Farmers take part in a go-slow protest in Dover, Kent
PA
Some farmers have said they will have to sell off land to meet the inheritance tax costs, with the NFU estimating 75 per cent of farms stand to be above the £1million Family Farm Tax threshold.
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, TV personality Jeremy Clarkson and leading politicians Kemi Badenoch, Sir Ed Davey and Nigel Farage all joined farmers at the last protest on November 13.
Sir Keir Starmer has since held a “grown-up” meeting with NFU chief Tom Bradshaw.
However, Labour MPs came under fire after a Tory motion to reverse the tractor tax was resoundingly rejected.
Keir Starmer
PA
Ahead of today’s protests, Liz Webster, founder of Save British Farming, said: “This anti-farming, Stalinist offensive from the Labour Government presents a real danger to us all. We rely on food to survive.
“Losing the ability to feed ourselves means a total loss of control. We learnt hard lessons in the last two world wars about the fact that food security is national security.
“Keir Starmer must listen to farmers and step back from the brink and do what is right and best for our great country.”
Do you think it is time for the Prime Minister to take farmers seriously and reverse the inheritance tax grab? Vote in our poll and have your say in the comments section below.
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