CONSERVATIVE leader Kemi Bandenoch has vowed to reverse the farmers’ tax branding Labour’s raid “cruel and unfair.”
Warning the Government will “destroy farming as we know it in this country” the top Tory said the inheritance tax hike on rural Britain will not raise any money.
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And she told Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to “look again” at the policy or risk becoming deeply unpopular.
After addressing thousands for farmers on Whitehall, the Tory leader told The Sun the crowds stretched back as far as the eye could see.
She added: “There are lot of people out there who are worried about their future and they need to know we are looking after them.”
Quizzed how she would reverse the farmers tax from opposition, Ms Badenoch said: “This policy is not going to raise any money.
“So in a year’s time if they have not u-turned that’s going to be patently obvious, and then they are going to have to look again.
“But if they know they’re becoming very unpopular because there is an opposition that is going to do something very different, that can change things. And we are going to do things differently.
“We will reverse this, it is not a good policy, it is cruel, it is unfair and it will destroy farming as we know it in this country.”
The Met Police estimated more than 10,000 people had joined the rally in central London shortly before midday – with “more arriving”.
Farmers have reacted with anger and dismay to the inheritance tax changes for farming businesses, which limit the existing 100% relief for farms to only the first £1 million of combined agricultural and business property.
Some warn they will have to sell off land to meet the costs and are threatening to strike over the pressures they say they are being put under by Government policy, while there are warnings over people’s mental health.
Meanwhile, Mr Farage told farmers at the protest: “I can feel myself that today is not just about inheritance tax. It really is farmers versus Starmer.”
But hitting back in Rio, the PM said “vast majority” of farms will be “totally unaffected” by changes to inheritance tax.
Speaking to the BBC at the G20 summit, Sir Keir Starmer said that the Government had put money into farming at the Budget.
He added: “If you take a typical case, which is parents who want to pass on their farm to one of their children … by the time you’ve built in the other income tax thresholds, it’s only those with assets over £3 million that would begin to pay inheritance tax, and that’s why I’m very confident that the vast majority of farms will be totally unaffected.”
