There’s been a lot of noise about the impact of the Budget on farmers and farming this week. My view is that the Government’s approach gives us the worst of both worlds. Here’s my explanation from BBC Question Time last night.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Good point, dissuade the big money buying up the land and protect the farms which have been passed from one generation to the next for multiple generations.
Farming subsidy has always existed to reduce food prices, not to help farmers. It's a bung to supermarkets, in effect.
Unfortunately it's not implemented in a consistent manner that enables food security or environmental protection, despite the warm words governments like to put out.
No political party has the answers where farming is concerned, if that's your inference. Nor do I.
What I am confident about in the IHT row is that the farmers have tied themselves to the tax planners' horse unwisely, and if they truly want to lead the discussion they will need to untangle.
As far as the Lib Dems are concerned, if they wish to take leadership on this, they need to find a way to separate their support for farmers from perceived backing of ultra-rich land bankers.
At the moment they haven't successfully done that; unaddressed this is playing with fire.
Comments
I've yet to see any party tackle both halves of the problem.
The solution is shift where the money from farmland comes... in other words make farming activity more profitable, and disincentivise not using it.
Unfortunately it's not implemented in a consistent manner that enables food security or environmental protection, despite the warm words governments like to put out.
What I am confident about in the IHT row is that the farmers have tied themselves to the tax planners' horse unwisely, and if they truly want to lead the discussion they will need to untangle.
At the moment they haven't successfully done that; unaddressed this is playing with fire.