On Tuesday 4th December, Opposition Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch forced a vote in Parliament to save family farms. While local MP Rebecca Smith supported the motion, it was ultimately voted down by 339 votes to 181, a majority of 158.
Rebecca Smith MP has helped lead the charge against the family farm tax, delivering a speech in Parliament on Tuesday ahead of the vote. She spoke about the importance of family farms for passing down knowledge of the land, protecting our rural landscape and the unique challenges of farming in Devon.
Closing her speech, Rebecca Smith MP, Member of Parliament for South West Devon, declared:
Farmers are keen to ensure that they can produce, protect the environment, feed the nation, create and sustain good jobs, and generate economic growth, but they cannot do any of that unless they are allowed to get on with the job that they are keen to do.
While the motion was voted down, the South West Devon MP has vowed to fight on in the interests of her farmers.
Responding to the Labour MPs’ decision, Rebecca Smith MP remarked:
Today Kemi Badenoch forced a vote in Parliament to save family farms. Rather than stand up for hard-working farmers, Labour MPs chose to cower behind their leader. The Government will press ahead with their destructive family farm tax.
I have campaigned relentlessly on behalf of my farmers since the shock announcement was made in the Budget some 5 weeks ago. For many, after years of having their margins squeezed, the family farm tax was the last nail in the coffin. Farmers' visceral anger at the NFU's mass lobby in Westminster was clear for all to see.
Preventing a farmer from passing on their life's work to their children is the ultimate slap in the face. The Prime Minister must reverse this cruel policy and apologise to farmers.
Left unchecked, Rebecca warns that Labour’s family farm tax will tear apart rural communities like South West Devon. Taxing farmers 20% on assets with over £1m (a threshold which any viable farm meets) “sounds a death knell for the family farm”.
Rebecca has met with her local NFU branch at the Moorland Hotel, spent a Saturday morning tramping through farmland and joined local farmers at NFU’s widely reported mass lobby in Westminster. Each farmer shared with her their deep worry that they won't be able to pass on their farms to their children because of Labour's family farm tax.
Farmers run on extremely thin margins, often left with less than 1% of profit on food they produce. When the Country and Land Business Association crunched the numbers, it found that the typical family farm would be required to spend 159% of its profits for a decade to pay inheritance tax, risking 70,000 family farms across the UK.
This policy also threatens to damage the UK's food security. At a time of global insecurity, we will become fully dependent on foreign imports to feed the nation. Rebecca has repeatedly argued that this will leave the UK vulnerable and hit the pockets of every British citizen, whether you live in urban Plympton and Plymstock or rural Wotter.
The Food Standard Authority reports that lower-income households now spent more than 16% of their weekly budget on in-home food, compared with just 5% for the highest-income households. These rising food prices will hit the poorest hardest and widen inequalities in our communities.
