Farming leader Jane Bassett has said the NFU’s mass lobbying event will be a key moment to emphasise the devastating impact of the Budget and tax changes for family farms.
The NFU Midlands regional chair will join farmers from Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Lincolnshire, Holland (Lincs), LNR (Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Rutland), Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in London for the NFU’s mass lobby on Tuesday, November 19.
The NFU has planned for 1,800 registered members to attend Church House, Westminster, where they will meet with their MPs, as well as across in Parliament, to explain the real-life impact changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) will have.
The lobby is part of the NFU’s efforts to urge the government to reverse changes to APR and BPR, announced in the Budget, highlighting how they will badly hit family farms, impact farmers’ ability deliver national food security and could lead to food price rises in supermarkets.
Jane, who represents farmers across the Midlands in her role and farms livestock, will be among those attending the mass lobbying event, and said: “As farmers, we will bring our own personal stories to our MPs.
“We will help them to understand the real-life impact of these decisions and why they need to be reversed.
“The government has massively miscalculated the impact of changes to APR and BPR on our farms – it could be devastating.
“Since the Budget, we have heard from farmers in real distress about the future and who fear they will lose their businesses.
“The changes announced are a huge blow for farming families, those across the region and beyond and the vast majority who will bear the brunt of this family farm tax aren’t wealthy people with huge cash reserves hidden away.
“They are families that have often spent generations building up their farm businesses to provide food for the nation and care for the environment, often on very tight profit margins.
“Our farms have struggled through multiple challenges and many are overwhelmed with the lowest margins imaginable, with the cost of rearing livestock and growing crops skyrocketing and their businesses have been hit by increasingly extreme weather conditions.
“Put simply, farmers have nothing left to give.”
The government announced it will reform APR and BPR from April 2026.
This will mean farm businesses will need to pay a tax rate of 20% of agricultural assets valued over £1 million.
The NFU rejects the government’s claims that around three quarters of farm businesses in England will be unaffected by the changes to APR and highlights the contradictions between different government departments.
The Treasury claims that 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected. However, Defra’s own figures show that only 66% of farms are worth more than the new £1 million threshold.
The Treasury’s figures are based on last year’s APR claims and do not consider farms that have also claimed BPR for diversified aspects of their businesses.
They also include a substantial number of smallholdings, with 27% of those Treasury figures being for assets under £250,000, and another 23% under £500,000.
The NFU argues that few viable farms are worth under £1 million and Treasury is working off the wrong figures.
Mrs Bassett added: “Many family farms have been feeding the nation for generations, and when the younger generation want to take that family farm on, they will be forced to sell-up just to pay the tax bill, damaging both the rural economy and its structure, as well as removing the positive environmental work farmers are now doing to protect the countryside.
“This is not a tax on the wealthy. Just because a farm has valuable assets, it does not mean the farmers themselves are wealthy – the average farmer’s return on capital invested is less than 1%.
“The mass lobbying event will be an opportunity for farmers in our counties and across the country to stand up and be heard and stop this destructive family farm tax from going ahead.”
The NFU is also continuing to highlight how National Insurance hikes and National Living Wage increases have hugely inflated the cost of producing the nation’s fruit and vegetables.
The NFU says growers must be able to recover a fair return from the market and urging retailer buyers to act responsibly as we move into our fourth year of cost inflation in the sector.
Farmers are also due to take part in a separate rally in London on the same day, not organised by the NFU, which is expected to be attended by some NFU members, other farmers and those from other rural and farming businesses.
