'It could derail us'

The family firms saying Reeves's tax will cause fire sales

- Phillip Inman

Unassuming wooden crates filled with brake pads and metal springs are piled high in the loading bay of the Broadbent factory close to Huddersfield town centre.

Shipping them out to Nigeria and Ghana remains the day job for Simon Broadbent, but the manufacturer's owner has a growing issue nagging at him - the fate of his 160-year-old business in the face of Labour's tax overhaul.

Broadbent has emerged as a reluctant challenger to plans by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to strip family firms of the ability to pass on their businesses tax free from next April. Campaigners, including the manufacturers association Make UK, say the tax overhaul threatens the backbone of the British industrial sector.

Under the current system, business property relief allows families to pass on assets free of inheritance tax (IHT). Reeves's IHT changes - which have also caused shock and anger among farmers - would mean children who inherit companies' property assets, which in many cases is a factory, will need to find the money to pay IHT at 20% on assets above £1m.

Once assembled on the west African coast, Broadbent's metal parts will be attached to centrifugal spinning machines, designed for sugar refiners to separate sugar crystals from molasses.

Simon, 72, is the great-great grandson of his cofounder Thomas Broadbent and as current chair, controls one of the few metal forming operations in the UK, bending and welding rolled steel into sophisticated machines that are exported all over the world.

He fervently makes the case for small, family-owned businesses. "For every JCB and Dyson, there are hundreds of firms just making a decent living, but not a fortune, and certainly not enough that we can hand over 20% of our perceived wealth every time one of us dies."