Keir Starmer has been accused by angry farmers of breaking his previous promises to the sector with Labour’s Budget yesterday.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced several changes which will directly impact British farmers on Wednesday, including limiting inheritance tax relief on farms to £1 million.
This means small family farms worth over that amount will struggle to pass their land down the generations from April 2026, without paying a 50% relief, and at an effective rate of 20%.
The sector was furious at these changes, especially as the prime minister promised to the National Farmers’ Union in 2023, when he was leader of the opposition, to look after the sector.
The NFU, which has 45,000 members, reminded Starmer with a damning clip on social media from last year’s conference that he had “looked farmers in the eye and said he knew what losing a farm meant”.
In the unearthed footage, Starmer tells the crowd: “Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming.
“Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back.
“That’s why the lack of urgency from the government, the lack of attention to detail, the lack of long-term planning – it’s not on. You deserve better than that.”
NFU president Tom Bradshaw said the Budget was “disastrous” for family farms and tenant farmers, and called the breaking of “clear promises” on Agricultural Property Relief “shameless”.
“When you look farmers in the eye and make them a promise, keep it,” he added.
He claimed that the new announcement “not only threatens family farms but also makes producing food more expensive”, and costs will have to be passed up the supply chain or “risk the resilience of our food production.”
He claimed the Budget will “snatch away the next generation’s ability to carry on producing British food, plan for the future and shepherd the environment.”
The NFU chief continued: “It’s clear the government does not understand, or perhaps doesn’t care, that family farms are not only small farms and that just because a farm is a valuable asset it doesn’t mean those who work it are wealthy.
“This is one of a number of measures in the Budget which makes it harder for farers to stay in business and significantly increase the cost of producing food.”
“Before the election Keir Starmer promised to establish a new relationship with farming and the countryside. Well, he’s certainly done that,” Bradshaw concluded.