Environment secretary tells farmers to blame Tories if they feel betrayed amid protests in London – UK politics live | Politics

Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, told BBC News this morning that the Tories were opposed to the inheritance tax changes because they would have a huge impact on farming families. And she claimed the proposal showed that Labour did not understand the countryside.

Atkins, who is MP for Louth and Horncastle, a largely rural constituency in Lincolnshire, said she referred to the environment secretary, Steve Reed, as “city Steve”. Reed is MP for Streatham and Croydon North in London. Atkins said he had told farmers before the election that inheritance tax rules would not change, and that, when the Conservatives had suggested Labour was likely to apply inheritance tax to farms, Reed had called that “desperate nonsense”.

She went on:

This Labour government, which is a city-dwelling, socialist government that does not understand the countryside, must now listen to farmers, because I’ve never known farmers this angry … The fact they’re coming to London today in so many numbers from all over the country shows just how worried they are.

In an interview with the BBC, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, defended imposing inheritance tax on some farms when Labour said in opposition that it was not planning to do that. Asked why the government changed its mind, he replied:

After we won the election, we discovered that the Conservatives have left a £22bn black hole in the public finances. And if we want to fix our National Health Service, rebuild all schools, provide the affordable housing that rural communities and across the country rely on, then we’ve had to ask those with the broader shoulders to pay a little bit more.

Asked if he understood why farmers felt betrayed, he said:

I’m sure we all feel betrayed because of the state that the Conservatives left the economy in. A £22bn pound black hole isn’t a small problem. It’s massive, and fixing that is necessary if we want to stabilise the economy and rebuild our public services.

Reed also restated the government’s claim that only around 500 estates would be affected by the changes every year. He said he was “very confident” in its figures, which he said had been endorsed by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

As Helena Horton explains here, the 500 estates figure only covers farms using agricultural property relief. But farmers also use business property relief to avoid inheritance tax, and the rules about this are also being tightened under budget plans. That’s why farmers say the real number of families affected every year is higher.

Large UK retailers including Tesco, Boots, Marks & Spencer and Next have written to Rachel Reeves to say that a £7bn increase in annual costs after last month’s budget would lead to job cuts and higher prices, Mark Sweney reports.

In an interview with BBC News, Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said that farmers felt particularly aggrieved because last year, when Steve Reed was shadow environment secretary, he said Labour was not planning to change agricultural property relief (the inheritance tax exemption). He said farmers only started hearing rumours that the government was going to go back on this about a week before the budget.

He said he did not accept the government’s claims that most farms will not be affected by the change. Instead, he said, “75% of the commerical farms in the United Kingdom will be within the scope of this policy change.”

Bradshaw also said farmers were willing to work with the government to produce a better version of the policy. He explained:

This policy is ill thought through. There’s still a 20% benefit for the uber-wealthy to invest in agricultural land, and with the changes they’ve made to pensions, they’ve now incentivised people to rip money out of pensions and invest in up to £1m of agricultural land. That is not going to deliver for food security. It’s absolutely nonsensical. It’s not joined up. There’s no thought about the impact on food production or the families that produce this country’s food …

Let’s sit down [with the government]. Give us the question. Tell us what the exam question is. We will work with you. If you want to stop people using land as a tax dodge, let’s work out the policy that does that. But this policy is not the answer.

Good morning. There is an old Westminster adage that says governments should never pick fights with professions that feature as characters in childrens’ books. Voters are happy to see people like bankers, managers and property developers get hammered, the theory goes, but they are inclined to sympathise with postmen (note to the Guardian style guide editors – it is Postman Pat, not Postal worker Pat), doctors, train drivers – and of course farmers. As the last two years have shown, governments have not always been guided by this rule, but it has some merit nevertheless.

Which is why today’s protests in Westminster will be so interesting. It is the first big, public showdown between the farming lobby and the Labour government and, with both sides digging in, it probably won’t be the last.

Farmers are angry because they believe plans in the budget applying inheritance tax to bigger farms will result in families who have been farming the same land for generations having to sell up to pay the inheritance tax bill. The government claims most proper farmers won’t be affected, and that it is entirely right to close a loophole that increasingly is being exploited by very rich people who do not have a clue how to drive a tractor but who want to pass on vast wealth to their children tax free.

Helena Horton has written a good explainer testing the arguments on both sides.

Steve Reed, the environment minister, has defended the tax changes. This morning he posted this on social media.

Half of farmland sold last year went to non-farmers including wealthy individuals trying to avoid inheritance tax.

It’s right that tax changes will ensure everyone pays their fair share – and young farmers can realise their dream of buying their own farm.

And the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been publicising this joint statement from Reed and Rachel Reeves, the chancellor.

But Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, says that farmers would keep going until they got the government to change its mind. He told Sky News this morning.

[Protests] will carry on. They cannot have a policy in place which has such disastrous human impacts and think we’re going to go quiet.

We don’t know what’s next, but I know the membership have never been so united in trying to overturn something in the time that I’ve been farming.

Asked if farmers could carry on until the government backed down, Bradshaw replied: “Absolutely.”

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: The National Farmers Union holds a rally at Church House in Westminster.

11am: Farmers hold a separate protest in Whitehall.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

11.45am: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, gives a speech on policing reform at the National Police Chiefs’ Council conference.

Late morning (UK time): Keir Starmer is doing interviews with broadcasters at the G20 summit in Brazil.

2.30pm: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, gives evidence to the environment committee about the work of his department.

5pm (UK time): Starmer holds a press conference in Brazil.

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