Thousands of farmers descended on central London on Tuesday for a ‘Pancake Day rally’, where they vowed that they would not stop protesting against the government’s inheritance tax policy.
The largely good-natured demonstration turned angrier as the protesters, following behind a large green combine harvester as songs blasted from a loudspeaker, passed the Houses of Parliament, with crowds chanting: “We won’t back down.”
It was the fourth time in four months that farmers had flocked to Westminster to protest against the Labour government’s plans to introduce a 20 per cent inheritance tax rate on farms worth more than £1m: bringing to an end the previous 100 per cent tax exemption on all family farms being passed down.
After hundreds of tractors jammed Whitehall during previous rallies, protesters were ordered by the Metropolitan Police not to bring any unauthorised vehicles, or risk facing arrest. Seven farming vehicles were permitted.
Pancakes were a hot topic at the Shrove Tuesday rally, with protesters making clear on their placards that there can be no pancakes without British farmers.
Speaking from atop a combine harvester, shortly after a farmer had hurled pancakes into the crowd, National Farmers’ Union president Tom Bradshaw said farmers “will not go away”.
Significant anger was directed towards the Labour government, with chancellor Rachel Reeves the subject of numerous angry placards.
The government has refused to budge on the policy despite calls to U-turn from farmers and opposition MPs. After a petition calling for the move to be scrapped reached more than 150,000 signatures, the government said there was an “urgent need to repair the public finances in as fair a way as possible” and the “reform of the reliefs strikes the right balance”.
Protester Elizabeth Hilliard, who edits a gardening magazine, said: “Obviously they hate farmers. I think the political elites just sneer at ordinary people, and they claim that they’re ill-informed, uneducated, stupid. They’re the opposite, absolute salt of the earth.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told The Independent it was “absolutely heartbreaking” to see the impact of the policy on farmers’ livelihoods, and demanded that the government reverse the policy.
Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, described it as a “dreadful, vindictive” policy which will “break family farming as we know it”.
She added: “Families are having conversations about whether the family can afford for [their] elderly relative to live beyond April 2026, because if they live past that date, that means that their family will get hit with a ginormous inheritance tax bill.”
One farmer said she has heard of elderly farmers who would prefer to die now than wait until inheritance tax changes come into force in April 2026.
“We’re already hearing of people that have already taken their own life because of the situation,” said Emma, who farms in Staffordshire. Her father passed the farm to her mother when he died five years ago.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and other Conservative politicians were among those who attended Tuesday’s rally. The government says that the actual threshold before paying inheritance tax could be as much as £3 million, once exemptions for each partner in a couple and for the farm property are taken into account.
Downing Street has repeatedly said it is “confident” that the majority of farms will not be affected by the reforms. The Treasury estimates that in 2021/22, only 27 per cent of estates claiming the current agricultural property relief (APR), which was introduced to protect family farms and businesses, were above the £1m threshold at which the tax kicks in.
If that remained constant, it would mean that 73 per cent of farms would not see their tax hiked and the changes would see around 500 estates pay inheritance tax per year, Treasury estimates found. However the industry believes the proportion of commercial family farms affected would be far higher than this.
On Monday, a third Labour MP came out to publicly oppose the measure. Mid and South Pembrokeshire MP Henry Tufnell said it is “embarrassing to say you’re going to do one thing and then do another”.
