Berkshire farmers reeling from budget announcement
Berkshire farmers reacting to the “awful” budget tax raid are preparing for mass protest in Westminster.
Farmers at the Southern Counties Farming & Machinery Show at Newbury Showground earlier this month said they had been ‘shafted’ by a Government which did not understand the countryside.
Calls for direct action, potentially on the same day as the Westminster rally on November 19, with farm machinery and tractors, are also growing across internet forums and on social media.
The changes to inheritance relief on business property mean that family firms passing on assets of more than £1m will be charged 20 per cent tax from April 2026.
Amendments to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief will see the existing relief rate of 100 per cent reduced to 50 per cent from April 2026 for farm businesses valued above £1m.
Sir James Dyson, who owns thousands of acres of farmland in the UK, including Beeswax farm in Compton, West Berkshire, said the Chancellor’s inheritance tax raid on farms and businesses was “spiteful” and warned it risked the “death of entrepreneurship”.
Eleanor Gilbert, known as Berkshire Farm Girl, says the budget is “a bit of a blow” to farmers.
She says the measures don’t seem to take into account that assets such as tractors, combine harvesters, even barns are all included in the value of an estate, not just the land.
“Combine harvesters cost £500,000 – even £1m,” she says. “Tractors, machinery, sheds – it all gets added up. Even the price of a growing crop.
“A lot of farmers are taken aback by this.
“In the Labour Government there are no MPs connected to agriculture or with agricultural backgrounds and maybe that is one of the problems.
“That’s maybe where a lack of understanding of the countryside comes from.
“In order to carry on farming, a lot of family farms will have to sell off land to pay inheritance tax.
“Also staffing is an issue because of the increase in national insurance and the minimum wage. It will mean dropping a person in order to pay for it.”
NFU president Tom Bradshaw slammed the changes as the “final straw” for many family farms already struggling with soaring costs, tightening margins and bad weather.
The NFU is now calling for the government to overturn the ‘family farm tax’ and has launched a petition - https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/family-farm-tax-nfu-petition/
Even retailers have been taken aback by the policy change, with one senior supermarket source telling The Grocer farmers “have every right to be incandescent”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer visited Woolhampton Cricket Pavilion in West Berkshire on the pre-election campaign trail to support the now sitting Labour MP for Reading West and Mid Berkshire Olivia Bailey.
He was keen to stress he ‘got’ the countryside, but sort of dodged the ‘is energy security more important than food security’ question when quizzed about the proliferation of solar farms on agricultural land.
So his comments seem hollow in the light of Rachel Reeve’s budget.
“We have to have food security,” he said at the time. “We have an ambition to have more locally home grown food.
“The Government does have some levers to pull on some of the big food procurement projects to say that a much bigger percentage of that has to come from the UK.
“We can drive up the demand there, and we will be working with farmers to get the balance right.”
Ms Bailey chipped in on the ‘Labour gets the countryside’ tip, saying she was keen to protect the chalk streams in the area, and get sewage out of the rivers. And a commitment to infrastructure to go along with all the extra housebuilding.
Newbury’s Liberal Democrat MP Lee Dillon says the inheritance tax (IHT) change threatens the stability of many family farms and the future of farming as we know it.
“This policy shows a real lack of understanding about rural communities and the lives of farmers,” he said.
“Farms are often passed down through generations – that continuity is what keeps our rural communities thriving.
“Breaking that chain, just to meet an inheritance tax bill, is not only short-sighted but also harmful to the very backbone of these areas.”
Mr Dillon warned that the policy could devastate farming families, many of whom already face steep financial challenges from rising operational costs and changing environmental policies.
“We need to support our rural businesses, not burden them with additional financial strain that risks destabilising local economies and way of life.”
The Liberal Democrats have long advocated for fair and supportive measures for rural communities, calling for an additional £1bn in annual support for farmers.
The Farming Community Network – a charity for the health and well being of people in farming – also had a stand at the machinery show in Newbury.
“It is at local groups at events like this are where people have been expressing a lot of worry,” said Mark Newman of the FCN.
“They are worried about the implications further down the line with inter-generational transfers.
“They are worried they will have to sell land to pay tax liability which reduces the viability of the farming business.
“And tenant farmers are worried that their landlord will also have to sell to pay the tax.
“The Government has also accelerated the reduction in direct payments [which are paid to farm businesses based on the amount of agricultural land they maintain].
“This was due to reduce until 2028 but that has been accelerated to 2026, which will affect people’s cash flow. This is also causing a lot of worry.”
Mark Thomas farms near Wantage, and volunteers with the FCN. “Most of these are family farms, and family relationships are what we get asked the most about,” he said.
“This has forced farmers to think about what is next for them in terms of succession planning.
“The budget has highlighted to the farming community the need for this now.
“Farmers are battling the weather, machinery breakdowns etc etc so to think about what happens next is sometimes too much.
“So the budget has highlighted that they need to get round the kitchen table.
“Inevitably some farms will stop.
“We all need to think about how this is going to work.
“There are opportunities too, but there is frustration, anger and uncertainty off the back of the bad weather, and global politics with the effect of Ukraine etc.
“Farmers need to voice their frustration. But we need to pause and reflect about what we do next and explore the options.
“We just had a group of Sparsholt Agricultural College students here. They are the future of farming. How are we handing them the farming industry?”
Eleanor Gilbert, Berkshire Farm Girl, added: “Farmers don’t see the land as an asset really.
“We see it as our shop floor. Our warehouse. Our place of work.
“Imagine taking the Government out of Parliament. They wouldn’t have anywhere to work.
“Farmers in a family farm just pass it on, they don’t see the cash value of it.
“If we have to keep selling things off, there won’t be any viable farms left.
“The only potential benefit I can see is that as a young person coming into farming there might be pockets of land coming available maybe at a reduced price.”
