To support UK Farmers

[TheHateIsNotGood]

And due to KS's inability to face them in Wales today they are now thinking of going on strike. Because the govt are being too stubborn to reconsider how they apply IHT on working family farms. By all means close the loophole that allows the 'landed gentry' to take advantage of the agricultural exception but not with so blunt an instrument.

I was hoping to add a post to an existing thread but there isn't one despite it being headline news today.

No..none of those are more important. Important, yes, but not more important. We need , water, food and shelter first.

Water and shelter are not the purview of farmers. Food can be imported (not my first choice, but nonetheless). Basic safety cannot. Want to ring France when you need the fire brigade?

So are some police, firefighters, NHS workers etc. there's good and bad in every profession.

The thing is @poetryandwine there's no shortage of firefighters. The demand outstrips supply, unlike, say fruit pickers. Or teachers. Teachers would be a better example for your argument, because the working conditions and pay is driving people out of the profession and so we have a shortage. So we have a decision to make - as we do with farming - do we want this thing? How much do we want it? How much do we need it? And how, then, do we respond.

It's not a moral argument, you see, but a pragmatic one.

Yes, but it seems some are making an emotional argument based on their feelings about Brexit. As if that was entirely down to farmers, and as if all farmers voted for it.

It's not a very pragmatic way to look at the situation at all.

I am happy to with teachers, @Animatron , although I think nurses of whom there is a great shortage provide a better example.

I never suggested that I was making a moral argument and there was no reason to infer that I was. But risking your life counts for something pragmatically, I think, and the possibility (absurd - making my point) of outsourcing firefighting is a purely pragmatic one.

It isn’t at all clear to me, as someone who values and can afford British food, that The Great British Public would not prefer cheaper prices for imported food. You might need a moral argument then

I don't think so, as food security is not a moral argument, but another pragmatic one.

Your statement "refuse to carry their share of the burden for the Brexit crisis they helped to create" is what is making people think you're eager to punish your political opponents, instead of thinking clearly about our national interest.

But as we have arrived at Brexit, I shall depart, as, god, who can stand all that.

instead of thinking clearly about our national interest.

Exactly. it's a madness to use policy that damages us more

Sigh. Don’t any of these people have jobs? Who’s funding them?

I’m not certain Jeremy Clarkson and Nick Griffin fronting the campaign is the best look?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/17/far-right-groups-plan-to-hijack-farmers-protest-in-london-against-tax-changes

OH that's not helpful or wanted. It's non political.

Obviously not water and shelter. I was just saying these are essential to maintain life.

I don’t align with a particular party so I don’t have particular opponents - although I thought the Tories had fatally compromised their integrity by 2023.

Brexit is an acknowledged drain on the economy to the tune of over £100 billion to date. Many of us who railed against it are paying for it. My taxes are increasing. Why shouldn’t 500 farming families, of whom statistically about 280 voted for the economic disaster that is Brexit, share the burden? It is punitive and characterising it that way is precious. We. Are. All. In. This. Together.

edit: isn’t punitive!

As an aside, I see that French farmers are planning nationwide protests tomorrow against the proposed EU trade deal with the Mercosur bloc:

Mercosur deal ‘disastrous’ for French farmers — don’t do it, [Michel] Barnier says:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2024/11/16/eu-mercosur-why-the-french-have-opposed-this-free-trade-agreement_6733046_8.html
https://www.politico.eu/article/mercosur-deal-farmers-france-country-eu-bloc-trade-south-america/

poetryandwine
Brexit is an acknowledged drain on the economy to the tune of over £100 billion to date

Has that figure been acknowledged by Rachel Reeves?

This is the bit that concerns the most. The french have a reasonable argument there. Health and environmental

"Livestock farmers have condemned it as a form of unfair competition, as the farms in South America are larger, the health and environmental standards are less strict and the labor costs are lower."

There's an excellent article on the state of UK farming here: https://unherd.com/2024/11/a-farmers-revolt-is-coming/

The short version is that while the Labour tax changes won't help, the main problems stem from the utter mishandling of Brexit by the previous government, including the hastily-signed trade deals with Australia and others. If I remember correctly even the minister who signed the Australia deal went on record about a year later to say how bad it was.

Something that also got me thinking was this: "It takes many farmers half their working lives to sort out their parent’s succession, pay out their siblings, and get their business breaking even." (emphasis added by me)

I picked up on that because one of the criticisms of the IHT changes has been that, even with 10 years to pay the tax, it might involve selling off some of the land. But as the piece notes, if a farmer dies with more than one child and wants to leave the farm to only one of them (perhaps only one of them wants to continue in farming), then for the estate to be divided up equitably, the child who gets the farm already has to generate a lot more than 20% of the value above £1 million to do so.

But I don't know whether that means that the extra IHT is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, or conversely, that "having to find money after the will is read" is something that farmers — perhaps with the help of innovative financial products? — have been dealing with for a long time, and so the IHT thing is just going to be a bit more of the same. I'm not sure how much sympathy we should have for the second child of the farmer, who is in a different line of work altogether and would be using their share of the inheritance to pay off their mortgage.

But maybe I have completely misunderstood how all of that works, in which case please let me know what actually happens.

Not unreasonably Reeves wouldn't dare! That would be politically toxic.

And putting a figure on the cost is an art rather than a science. But £100bn is likely to be about right (NB that would be £100bn every year, not in total). The most recent credible analysis was from Cambridge Econometrics.

Eg
www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-uk-economy-almost-ps140billion-smaller-because-brexit

I see that Cambridge Econometrics also work for the EU and have offices in Brussels;

https://www.camecon.us/news/new-brussels-office/

Conspiracy theories not particularly helpful. More usefully their report was criticised by Patrick Minford:
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/284193/1/E2024_02.pdf

But £100bn is an approximation that most economists would think reasonable.

The £3 million figure everyone is referring to is wrong. The most a farming couple can pass on their deaths free of inheritance tax is £2,650,000 and they will need to make sure they both own the farm as the agricultural/business relief is not transferrable.

Indeed!
Yep the writing is on the wall for food production in the UK. Some of The sentiment in this thread seems to not give one hoot that farmers will be closing up shop.
That says more about you if you have these views because most decent people DO care about British farming and food production.
Farmers I know dont want special treatment just a fair price for their produce and the tax releif to keep re- investing in a business that gives about 1% return.
it probably won't be immediate but 10 years on from now will be a very different landscape and if that's the future we sign up for then good luck for the future generations, best start buying some poly tunnels!

As for the comments about passing on generational wealth: ‘Passing on and on and on and on and on.,.,
You fundamentally have absolutely no understanding of this concept. No one will ever realise that wealth because the need to ‘ Do what they do’ will carry on and on and on….. and thank goodness for that!

A final note about Solar farms - the recent low level cloud and lack of wind speeds meant the UK STILL imported 60% of our energyfrom over seas - another short sighted policy as the adults left the room - turn the lights out when you leave please 😘

I was thinking more of bias rather than conspiracy theories.

But £100bn is an approximation that most economists would think reasonable

Rachel Reeves is an economist, apparently.

Hopefully the next government will chuck this stupid policy out
and
make developers instal air source heat pumps to all new housing and solars on the roof….Labour has such a short sighted attitude and plan to waste land

But £100bn is an approximation that most economists would think reasonable

Rachel Reeves is an economist, apparently.

I guess Reeves would agree, but she would not dare to say so!

Prof Minford (the critic of the Cambridge Econometrics study) is an interesting character by the way. For years he was regarded as an outlier by other economists. If you're persuaded by the Leave case and the Minford school of libertarian free trade he did make out a strong economic case for Brexit which helped to swing things towards leaving and I think now gives him much more of an authoritative voice. He also advised Margaret Thatcher on coal mining. Linking back to the point of the thread, his route to brexit success involves doing much the same to farming (and manufacturing) as Thatcher did to mining.

I tried to summarise several pages ago here

_https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami_being_unreasonable/5211125-to-support-uk-farmers?page=11&reply=139866286

and external link here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5211125-to-support-uk-farmers?page=12&reply=139866784

Because of the pain it would cause to farming and manufacturing it was widely discredited as nuts before the 2016 referendum. But given that we are where we are with no way back it is a plausible way of making Brexit work.