Tension, anger and frustration ‘so palpable’ among farmers after Budget – NFU – Irvine Times

Tom Bradshaw, who is meeting Environment Secretary Steve Reid on Monday, said current plans to change Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) “need to be overturned and quickly”.

Speaking to the PA news agency, Mr Bradshaw spoke of “tension, anger, frustration” among farming communities.

But Mr Reid said the plans set out in Wednesday’s Budget were “a fair and balanced approach that protects family farms while fixing the public services those same families rely on”.

According to budget papers from April 2026, farmers will be able to claim 100% inheritance tax relief on the first £1 million of combined farm and business assets, with the tax dropping to 50% after that.

The government is “restricting the generosity of farm relief” to make the inheritance tax system “fairer”.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph on Friday, Mr Reid said: “I completely understand farmers’ anxiety about any changes. But rural communities need better NHS, affordable housing and public transport, which we can provide if we make the system fairer.

“That’s why the Labor government has announced plans to reform farm property relief.

“Only the wealthiest estates will be asked to pay, not small family farms as some misleading headlines claim.

“Look at the details and you will see that the vast majority of farmers will not be affected at all.

“They will be able to pass the family farm on to their children, as previous generations have always done.”

After reading Mr Reid’s article, Mr Bradshaw said: “It looks like they’ve decided they’re going to double the price, which I’m totally baffled by.”

Mr Bradshaw said he had never seen the farming industry in the position it was in now and although it had built up over the last four or five years, he said: “Today the tension, the anger, the frustration, so much so tangible.

“We will work with the government to find a solution, but I just hope that the solution is forthcoming.”

He added: “I just think what our members are telling us is that this is a government that doesn’t understand farming.

“They’ve shown us with this budget that they just don’t understand what we’re doing to produce food for the country.”

He said farmers are considered rich because they have an asset, but pointed out that the return on that asset is “very, very low”.

Mr Bradshaw added: “I think there is real anger in the countryside that this government has demonstrated that it doesn’t understand the farming industry.

“I was so pleased when I saw the Labor manifesto. These words “Food security is national security” are so important, but these words do not feed people.

“Family farms in the UK are the ones that produce food for people and will be adversely affected by this change.

“And I really hope that the government can see that they were wrong.”

The NFU said Britain’s farmers and producers would engage in massive lobbying of their MPs on the plans on November 19, and Mr Bradshaw said it was already “massively outnumbered”.

While Mr Reid referred to “misleading” headlines, the NFU used the same word to describe the Treasury figures.

Mr Bradshaw said he did not understand the Treasury figures, adding: “At a time of huge upheaval in the industry, with all the changes post-Brexit, post-Covid and the Ukraine crisis, and all the inflation, to bring this change now, especially when the Secretary of State spoke publicly about understanding the pressures on the industry, the mental health challenges facing the industry, and then they brought that change.

“I really don’t understand who did the modeling or how they came to this decision.”

The issue has been raised repeatedly in the House of Commons and Business Secretary Douglas Alexander has defended the Government’s inheritance tax reforms, saying “difficult and necessary choices” had to be made.