At the next City of York Council meeting (21st November), York’s Conservative Group will table a motion calling on the Council to oppose the government’s ill thought-out changes to farming taxes – and urge the Labour-led Council to work harder to understand York’s agricultural communities.
According to official data, around 250 farms across York could be impacted by the Government’s proposed cuts to Agricultural Property Relief.[1] Taken together, York’s farms cover around 18,000 hectares of farmland and countryside. The farms directly employ hundreds of local people across the area, and support many more jobs in the local suppliers and distributors that depend on their produce. Many of the local butchers in York are linked to these farms in some way.
Although on paper, these farms may seem like valuable assets, this often does not translate into high incomes or cashflow and the situation has worsened over the years with rising input costs such as high energy prices. Whilst Labour claim most farms would be unaffected by the removal of APR, the reality is that these changes would likely mean the break-up of farms which do not have the funds to pay the Inheritance Tax charge – many of these farms having been in families for hundreds of years.
Conservative Group Leader, Cllr Chris Steward said:
Labour like to pretend this is about tackling rich farmers, but as anyone who has spent any time on a farm knows this is simply not the reality. There is significant hardship in many rural communities and people working hard to feed us deserve more support.
Bringing in IHT on farms will threaten the countryside and food security, as families that have been custodians of our farms for generations will struggle to continue and will be replaced by large companies and the overseas wealthy.
We already import around 40% of the food we eat in the UK, and this tax is only going to make things even worse. That’s why we are calling for more work to be done by Labour locally and nationally to understand the true state of British farming. It’s time they came down from their Ivory tower and spent some time on a Yorkshire farm.
