The CLA has warned the Chancellor's Budget has the potential to be ‘deeply damaging' for British farming, land management, food security and environmental recovery, and is asking farmers and rural businesses to sign a letter to their MPs.
Autumn Budget
In the letter, the CLA said rather than setting out an ‘ambitious agenda for economic growth for the entire country', the Chancellor instead announced measures that she knows will ‘inflict permanent damage on the rural economy'.
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CLA warned that proposed changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief will put ‘some 70,000 farm businesses across the UK, and many other multigenerational businesses into paying inheritance tax.'
Family farms
It goes on to say, that despite the Chancellor saying she is ‘protecting small family farms', the CLA said that even with the combined threshold of £1m and the 50% relief, the inheritance tax ‘burden' will affect hard-working family farms up and down the country.
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It outlined an example of a diversified farm with 250 acres of land, highlighting that it would need to find more than £250,000 to pay death duties, adding this was a ‘catastrophic drain on business resources.'
'Real term cut'
Alongside changes to APR and BPR, the letter addressed the ‘real term cut' to the agricultural budget in England. It acknowledged that the Environmental Land Management Schemes and programmes designed to improve farming productive would make a difference, but that the funding did not match the challenges ahead.
CLA also said that the ‘accelerated reduction in delinked payments' was ‘more alarming' and will impact all farm businesses.
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Delinked payments
In the letter it mentioned the delinked payments in 202 in England will be ‘much lower' that could be expected or planned for in cash flow projections, adding this will ‘hamper' farmers and business owners ability to grow, deliver food and the environment, as well as ‘undermining' the stability of rural communities.
The letter concluded by asking local MPs to ‘press the Chancellor to change course' and ‘instead build a rural economy that can feed the nation, improve the environment, create good jobs and generate economic growth.'
Farmers and rural business owners can sign the letter here. The letter will be forwarded to their local MP.
