Labour‘s inheritance tax raid will hit family farms, a new report is expected to say. Baroness Batters, the former president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), will reportedly acknowledge the impact of the policy on the profitability of farms in her independent review later this month.
This is despite the Government repeatedly insisting most will not be affected by the controversial decision to slap inheritance tax on farms worth over £1 million. But the Batters review will not make recommendations on what should be done because it was not one of the questions she was asked to consider by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins told The Telegraph: “The family farm and business taxes are destroying the profitability of family farms, through the threat of the taxes themselves and the loss of confidence and investment they are causing.
“Any report on farming profitability must therefore tackle these death taxes head on. If it does not, then that will be further evidence of the Government’s refusal to listen to hard truths about their chaotic farming policies.”
The Government has faced an ongoing backlash for restricting the current 100% inheritance tax relief for farms to the first £1 million of combined agricultural and business property in the Chancellor’s Budget last year.
Critics have warned it could spell the end of family farms across the country, while there have been reports of desperate farmers pushed to the brink of suicide before the change comes into force next April.
Rural Labour MP Markus Campbell-Savours had the whip suspended last week for voting against the move.
The Batters review, which was commissioned in April, has been subject to delays and is now expected to be published alongside a response from Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds in the coming weeks.
The Daily Express has been campaigning for a U-turn on the policy with our Save Britain’s Family Farm crusade.
A Defra spokesman said the review “acknowledges recent changes to inheritance tax in the farming sector” but is blocked from directly contradicting the Government.
They added: “Its focus, and Baroness Batters’s recommendations, are on supporting farming profitability. Tax policy falls outside the scope of the review.”