Kemi: Labour's ministers do not understand what it means to risk everything on a harvest or a herd

RAID BACKLASH

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CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves unveiled reforms at last October’s Budget, limiting the existing 100% inheritance tax relief for farms to only the first £1million of combined agricultural and business property.

Before last year’s General Election, Sir Keir Starmer looked farmers in the eye and promised he would protect their way of life.

A year later and this Labour Government is conducting an assault on rural Britain.

It started with the Family Farms Tax, the deeply damaging inheritance tax policy in Labour's first Budget that threatens the very existence of family farms, passed down from generation to generation.

I have spoken to countless farmers across the country since Rachel Reeves announced her changes to Agricultural Property Relief.

Tradition

They all tell me the same thing — they don’t think the Labour Party understands that farming is not just a job, it is a way of life and a deeply rooted tradition.

My grandad was a farmer. I saw up close how much work it was.

Early mornings, late nights. There is no day off, no free weekend. Yet farmers do this hard work for little reward and they pass the skills, the knowledge and, crucially, the farms to their children — as their parents did before them.

Labour are destroying this tradition. But we shouldn't be surprised.

Barely a single Cabinet minister has ever run a business and few have even worked outside the public sector or a trade union. Labour’s ministers do not understand what it means to be self-employed or to risk everything on a harvest or a herd. They certainly do not understand what it takes to run a farm or the critical land management our farmers undertake.