Henley farmer feels betrayed by Budget

A FURIOUS Henley farmer has described the betrayal he and other members of the farming community feel after last week’s Budget changed inheritance tax rules.

Selling off land or quitting farming all together are some of the bitter pills farmers such as Duncan Hawley, 41, say they may have to swallow after chancellor Rachel Reeves announced inheritance tax will be charged at 20 per cent on farms worth more than £1m.

He is now one of many farmers who have pledged to join a planned National Farmers' Union protest march in Westminster on Tuesday, 19th March, in an attempt to get the government to reverse what Duncan described as a “ridiculous budget”.

“It’s a stab in the back,” he told the Herald. “In February 2023, Keir Starmer came to our conference and said he was the farmers’ friend and would protect farming, but he’s gone back on everything he said.

“I’ve got a ten-year-old daughter, Hattie, who started her own flock of sheep in the summer and she absolutely loves it. I’ve been a sheep farmer all my life and Hattie said she wants to follow in my footsteps, but I’ve now had to tell her she won’t be able to do that because of the Budget. How do I tell her to look for something else? This government doesn’t get farming.”

Like many others, Duncan and his wife, Nicky, said they face the prospect of having to sell land to meet the inheritance tax bill they may face when his parents Michael, 81, and Amanda have – as he puts it – “departed”.

“Farmers are seething and it could be curtains for many small family businesses like ours,” he continued.

“We own the farm and have done so for 45 years. I started farming as a toddler and went into it full time when I finished school at 16. We have another daughter called Tabby, aged five, and we are a typical English farming family.

“It’s not just farmers this is going to affect, it will hit suppliers, vets, machinery dealerships and the local labour force because there won’t be a farm to go to.”

He also warned there will be higher food prices and even food shortages.

Duncan added: “I feel like we’ve had the carpet swept from underneath us. Many of the proposed changes don’t come into effect until April 2026 but the implications are already being felt in the lead up to that time.

“There are serious mental health issues in agriculture, but we remain the backbone of this country. I’m astounded and lost for words by what Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have done. They’ve hit farming hard and I feel they’ve screwed me left, right and centre – I’ve been bulldozed.

“If the government has to import food because there’s not enough farms anymore, then that’s not good for the environment is it?”

He described farmers as the custodians of the land who work unsocial hours but, in light of last week’s Budget, he’s concerned no one will want to go into farming.

“If this had happened in France or Germany the farmers would have brought the country to a standstill and what would happen if there was another war and there were no farms around to feed the nation?” Duncan asked.

Duncan has contacted Stratford MP Manuela Pertghella to see if she can raise the issue in Westminster.

Tax experts have suggested the changes could affect fewer than 500 farms a year, once the tax thresholds and farmers giving their property to their children before they die are taken into account.

But the NFU has stressed that the Treasury had a “completely skewed view of the structure of farming in the UK”.

NFU president Tom Bradshaw said: “Very few viable farms are worth under £1m. That could buy you 50 acres and a house today. No viable food-producing business is 50 acres. The average farm in the UK is more than 250 acres.

“The only sensible course of action for the future of family farms across the country, as well as for the sake of Britain’s food security and our legislated environmental targets, is to reverse this decision.”

Ms Reeves has defended her decision, stating: “Only a very small number of agricultural properties will be affected, but last year the benefits of agricultural property relief, 40 per cent of the benefit was felt by seven per cent of the wealthiest landowners.

“I don’t think it is affordable to carry on with a relief like that when our public finances are under so much pressure.”

The NFU said the Budget was yet another blow to British farmers after a decade of tightening margins, inflation and extreme weather events.

There have also been changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief, despite repeated assurances from ministers that this wouldn’t happen, the NFU said.

Farmers are also reeling from the announcement of a speeding up of the phasing out of old support schemes, which amounts to a significant cut to farm incomes.

Mr Bradshaw added: “The vast majority of the people who will bear the brunt of this decision aren’t wealthy people with huge cash reserves hidden away. They are families that have often spent generations building up their farm businesses to provide food for the nation, often on very tight profit margins.

“Their businesses have struggled through all the changes caused by Brexit, they’ve suffered years of being squeezed to the lowest margins imaginable, with costs of production skyrocketing, they’ve been battered by increasingly extreme weather conditions.

“They have nothing left to give.”