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The Importance of Farmers to Our Economy & National Security
- 5 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Earlier this week in Parliament I spoke about the Government’s short-sighted handling of the Family Farm Tax and the uncertainty it continues to create for farming families.
At this very moment, when fertiliser and diesel costs are spiking due to the conflict in the Middle East, we must finally provide farmers with the certainty and support they have been missing for far too long.
After over 18 months of determined campaigning and sharing stories of terminally ill farmers planning to kill themselves to avoid the inheritance tax on agricultural assets over £1m, the Government finally listened and increased the threshold to £2.5m.
The Liberal Democrats and I stood with these families from the outset: meeting them on multiple occasions in Parliament and across West Berkshire, hosting a cross-party farming conference in Westminster last summer, and repeatedly urging the Government to recognise their importance to the country.
However, as I emphasised in the Chamber, this partial U-turn is far from case closed. Many remain in limbo, delaying machinery orders, holding back from expanding their farms, and putting future plans on hold to ensure they don’t push past the £2.5 million threshold. That hesitation doesn’t just affect individual farms but will ripple throughout the domestic supply chain and the price we all pay at the supermarket.
At a time of global instability and external shocks, our self-sufficiency is crucial, and it is British farmers that sit at the crossroads of our food security, our natural environment, rural economy, and agricultural heritage – that is especially true across Newbury and West Berkshire, where farming families have shaped our landscape and supported the local economy for generations.
The Liberal Democrats have raised these calls from the start. It’s now time for the Government to join the dots, scrap the tax entirely, and back our farmers – not just on economic, but national security grounds.
