Protesting farmers are ‘wrong’ about inheritance tax change, environment secretary says

The environment secretary has defended the government’s policy to change inheritance tax rules for farmers, insisting that the “vast majority of farms” will not be affected.

Steve Reed spoke to the environment, food and rural affairs select committee on Tuesday as farmers protested in the streets of Westminster over the government’s recent budget reforms.

Labour announced in the budget that there would be a 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million, a measure the president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) has described as “horrific” and a “betrayal”.

But Reed contradicted the NFU’s claim that the majority of farmers will now pay inheritance tax on their farms, arguing the government’s figures are “accurate”.

The environment secretary said: “I have every reason to believe that this data, projections based on actual hard data, is accurate and that the vast majority of farms will not be affected by the changes to APR [agricultural property relief], which is what I’ve said.”

He added: “Assuming these projections from HMRC, validated by the OBR and IFS, are correct then many of them, probably happily, are wrong because there are things that they can do to plan their tax affairs as most businesses or asset owners would do to limit their liability.”

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