Make no mistake - this isn't just bad news for farmers

I never imagined that farmers like me would need to go to London in order to protect our future livelihoods, but here we are. Contrary to what the government would have you believe, the recently announced inheritance tax changes will impact a vast many – it isn’t just an elite few.

- VICTORIA COBDEN

We live on my husband’s family farm in West Meon, Hampshire. My husband has been here for 51 of his 53 years – and it’s terrifying to think how our lives are going to change. My father-in-law is still working at the age 82, and we had all hoped the farm would, in time, pass down to our two daughters to continue producing good quality, farm-assured beef and lamb for local people to enjoy.

Now we will face selling off part of the farm to pay the so-called “tractor tax”. And the bleak reality that neither us nor our girls will be able to make a living through the farm moving forward.

Our family farming story began in 1939 when my husband’s maternal great-grandfather and grandfather died in the same year, leaving his grandmother a widow. She was left an inheritance which she decided to use to buy a small farm at the beginning of the Second World War, as she felt it would be the best place to bring up her two young daughters. In times of rationing, she was adamant her girls must have fresh milk; this started a passion for farming which she passed on to her daughter, my late mother-in-law, who then passed this to her son, my husband.

We feel this tax will take away all the hard work they put in. Apparently, there are benefits to living only an hour from London – but the downside is that farmland in Hampshire has a high value, meaning the level of IHT is large even on what is considered a small farm. It’s not our fault that land is in short supply, which in turn hikes up the value of ours.