The government is steamrolling family farms December 2, 2024 Ministers appear to have got their understanding of farming from Ladybird books filled with smiling yokels on little red tractors, says Tim Bonner The starting point for trying to understand the current row over inheritance tax and agricultural land is that farming is an essentially illogical activity. The return on assets in farming businesses is [...]
Starmer’s war on farmers will end in tears November 20, 2024 Farmers are busy people, often completely immersed in a lifestyle and a sector that demands their total attention and dedication. They kept going throughout the pandemic. They’ve been untroubled by the great working-from-home debate. They’ve put up with policy changes, regulatory reform, subsidy reform, Brexit checks, weather events, supply chain disruption, Whitehall bureaucracy, rising costs [...]
Tractors circle Westminster as farmers protest inheritance tax rise November 19, 2024 Thousands of farmers marched on Westminster today in protest against the government’s plans to impose inheritance tax on farms. The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been urged to meet with representatives from the industry after she unveiled plans in the Budget to impose inheritance tax (IHT) on farms worth more than £1m from April 2026. The [...]
How Arla Foods boss went from selling cigarettes to Lurpak and Cravendale November 15, 2024 A globe-trotting career that began selling cigarettes at British American Tobacco and has led to heading up the UK arm of dairy giant Arla Foods is maybe not what Bas Padberg could have predicted when he started out in the early 1990s. The managing director of the group behind Lurpak, Cravendale, Skyr and B.O.B milk [...]
‘Disaster Budget will kill UK farming’, warns chicken king Boparan November 12, 2024 Entrepreneur Ranjit Singh Boparan, whose empire ranges from Bernard Matthews to Carluccio’s, has warned the autumn Budget is a “disaster for business” and will “deliver a final fatal blow to the thousands of small family-owned farms”. Boparan added that the “inheritance tax raid” on farms announced in the Budget on 30 October “risks supply being [...]
UK farms could shrink ‘like Russian dolls’ amid tax row, government warned November 7, 2024 The UK’s farms could be set to shrink “like Russian dolls”, the government has been warned, thanks to Labour’s inheritance tax changes announced in the Budget. Shadow business secretary – and former City minister – Andrew Griffith has cautioned that the policy could mean “like Russian dolls, with each generation that passes, you end up [...]
Labour’s farm tax is pure class war November 6, 2024 Socialists targeting landowners is nothing new, but don’t expect the countryside to take Labour’s punitive farm tax lying down, says James Price “Buy land – they ain’t making any more of it”. With apologies to the Dutch and their reclamation efforts, this has been solid investment advice for a long time. But that’s about to [...]
Dairy lost over £10m before being gobbled up by Müller November 5, 2024 A Lancashire diary slumped to a loss of more than £10m in the year before it was acquired by milk and yoghurt giant Müller, it has been revealed. Yew Tree Diary has reported a pre-tax loss of £10.2m for the 12 months to 31 March, 2024. The loss comes after the business made a pre-tax [...]
No10 hits back as Dyson boss slams ‘ignorant’ and ‘spiteful’ Budget November 4, 2024 Sir James Dyson has branded Rachel Reeves’ first Budget “ignorant” and “spiteful” as he accused her of “killing off family businesses, individual aspiration and economic growth”. The British entrepreneur, 77, hit out at the Chancellor following the government’s first fiscal event last week, writing in the Times newspaper that Labour “hates British families”. He cautioned [...]
Labour’s inheritance tax reforms ‘threaten the very fabric of the countryside’ October 31, 2024 In yesterday's Budget, the Chancellor announced a sweeping overhaul of the inheritance tax system, including changes to a relief which had allowed agricultural land to be passed on tax-free.