‘They’re killing our industry’: Farmer says Labour is risking UK food supply

A furious farmer behind an upcoming mass protest has told ITV News that Labour’s change to inheritance tax will spell the end for home grown food in the UK.
Olly Harrison, a cereal farmer from near Liverpool, said angry farmers from across the country will be demonstrating outside Downing Street on Tuesday, to demand a U-turn from Sir Keir Starmer.
In her Budget last month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced changes to inheritance tax that meant previously exempt farmers would have to pay 20% when passing on farms worth more than £1 million.
“We’re angry because we can’t carry on farming anymore,” Mr Harrison said. “It’s also demoralising. You don’t farm for the profits… You look after it for the next generation.
“When you’re going to lose 20% of all you’ve ever worked for, your ancestors have worked for, people are very angry.
“It means that a farm every 20, 35 years or whatever, when the generations change and it gets a new manager or a new person in charge, it’s just going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. Two or three generations, it’s gone.”
But the government has continued to defend its position.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed has insisted “three quarters of farmers will pay nothing” in inheritance tax.
But farmers have challenged the figures, pointing instead to data from Defra which suggests 66% of farm businesses are worth more than the £1 million threshold at which inheritance tax will now have to be paid.
Mr Harrison suggested it would catastrophic for the UK if the inheritance tax forced any farms to close.
“The line that came out of the government is, it’s only going to affect 565 farmers a year. We can’t afford to lose five farms a year,” he said.
“There’s nearly 70 million in the UK. We need to feed people and it’s farmers that produce that food.”
And National Farmers’ Union President Tom Bradshaw pointed to figures which show income falls of 73% for cereal farmers and 68% for dairy farmers in 2023/24, after two very strong years for both sectors.
And he said that instead of a government creating policies to support British agriculture and help farmers and growers build financial resilience into their businesses, the recent Budget has “left farmers reeling”.
Labour’s inheritance tax change limits the 100% relief for farms to only the first £1 million of combined agricultural and business property.
For anything above that, landowners will pay a 20% tax rate, rather than the standard 40% rate of inheritance tax (IHT) applied to other land and property.
Quizzed in the Commons on the dispute over how many farms would be affected by the changes, Mr Reed insisted Treasury data was “crystal clear”.
“Three quarters of farmers will pay nothing as a result of these changes, family farming will continue into future generations, just as it should do,” he told MPs.
But Mr Harrison suggested Labour didn’t think through the implications of the change.
Asked if Labour understands farmers, he said: “I don’t I don’t think any government recently has understood them but this one particularly, I think they’ve rushed the Budget, they’ve not looked at the figures. I think were the fall guys.”
He said a nationwide farmers’ strike could follow if the government doesn’t listen.
If it’s a strike that’s needed, if we’re not listened to on the 19th, I can see that happening. But it won’t just be farmers striking, it’ll be everyone around us.
Mr Bradshaw said: “Many will be faced with a tax bill of millions. Some will be forced to sell all or part of their farm to raise the funds.”
And he said the tax “threatens our food security” and – along with other changes in the Budget – to push up prices for consumers, as he accused the Treasury of getting its figures wrong on how many farms would be affected.
“The only sensible course of action is for the Treasury to reverse this decision and soon,” he said.
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