NFU to organise mass lobby to ensure farmers' voices are heard on APR

NFU say there are determined to make farming members voices heard, after many in the industry shared their ‘frustration' over the Chancellor's changes to Agricultural Property Relief in the Budget.

Budget

In a letter to its members, the NFU president Tom Bradshaw outlined that a mass lobby of Parliament will take place in Westminster on November 19 to engage with MPs on the issue of APR, but this time in Parliament.

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Agricultural Property Relief

The union said it wants to bring to life the impacts of this policy change on farms, on British farming and on food supply and urge the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to reconsider these measures.

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NFU president Tom Bradshaw said: "Farmers and growers have been left reeling from the changes announced in the budget which demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of how the British farming sector is shaped and managed. The current plans to change APR and BPR need to be overturned and fast.

"Farmers are rightly angry and concerned about their future and the future of their family farms, having been reassured by minsters in the lead up to the Budget that APR and BPR changes were not on the table."

He said the Treasury's figures which claim this will only affect one in four British farms are misleading.

"The £1 million cap to APR shows how little this government understands the sector. Very few viable farms would be worth under £1m, but lots of smallholdings and houses with a few acres let for grazing might be. The asset value of genuine food-producing farms will be high, given the size they need to be to remain viable businesses; but that's the value of the asset, it doesn't reflect its profitability which is often, and increasingly so, very low.

"Clearly the government does not understand that family farms are not only small farms, and that just because a farm is an asset, it does not mean those who work it are wealthy. Every penny the Chancellor saves from this will come directly from the next generation having to break up their family farm. It simply must not happen."

He added MPs needed to understand the consequences of their actions.

"British farmers will ask their MPs to look them in the eye and tell them whether they support this.

"There is still time for the government to accept they have got this wrong, and my message to ministers is that they should do the right thing and reverse this awful family farm tax."