Farmer (and Vicky the cow) at tax protest

A FARMER and his daughter brought a cow to Westminster to protest against the changes to inheritance tax.

David Passmore, who owns 500 acres of land in Ewelme, brought Vicky, a Limousin heifer, to a gathering in College Green on Tuesday.

His family, including daughter, Bella, 12, were joined by Freddie van Mierlo, the Liberal Democrat MP for Henley, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservatives, and other members of her shadow cabinet.

The protest was against the Government’s policy that inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1million, which were previously exempt, will be liable to tax at 20 per cent from April 2026.

Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves has said that around 520 estates are expected to be affected by the reforms. But according to estimates from the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, up to 75,000 individual farm company owners could be impacted in the upcoming generation.

The protest was organised ahead of delivering the “Stop the family farm tax” petition to the government in an attempt to overturn the ruling.

Mr Passmore, who travelled for more than two hours to support the petition and other small farming families, called the tax “spiteful”.

He said: “It doesn’t achieve any of its aims because it’s not going after people using agricultural property relief for farmers as a tax dodge, it’s catching out the genuine bona fide family farms, which is just an appalling policy.

“It’s just bad guidance from them to just come up with the same line that there is a £22 billion black hole – it’s like a broken record. The government should be about listening, acting and getting policies which achieve an aim but they’re not budging.”

Mr Passmore worries that the farm, which he has owned since 1959, will not be feasible to pass on to his daughter, who wishes to continue herding cattle.

He said: “If I was to invest in my farm now and then die, it would just increase the tax bills, so why would I invest in the business when you’re going to leave your children with an even bigger tax bill? It’s appalling.”

Mr Passmore said he is concerned about the livelihoods of older farmers who may not be able to reap the benefits of a lifetime’s work.

He said: “It’s an industry, sadly, with very high suicide rates for a whole number of reasons. You’ve got farmers who are in their old age and don’t want to be a burden on their family or their children. But if they died the day after April 6, 2026, they could leave their family with a multimillion-pound tax bill that’s completely unaffordable. They have worked all their lives to build up their multi-generational farming business, which has been built up with livestock, their buildings and land. You have the government saying you can gift it away on a seven-year rule but if you’re in your 90s or have a terminal illness, you haven’t got seven years.

“Having a tax puts people in impossible situations where they think the unthinkable and it catches out the unlucky.”

Mr van Mierlo said: “Farmers across the constituency and the country have been squeezed for a very long time. They were impacted very badly by Brexit and the poorly managed transition to replacement of basic payments and very bad trade deals that were agreed with Australia and New Zealand under Conservatives and now under Labour.

“In our manifesto, we put forward a billion pounds a year to invest in farming. I think farmers are fantastic stewards of the countryside and really care about their businesses and obviously form a vital role within our economy as well producing the food that we eat. We should be getting behind them.

“Clearly there are issues around people who have been buying up land to escape tax but Labour’s reforms are very badly thought through. They don’t target the right people and family farmers, ordinary farmers are going to be hit really badly by this. That’s what they’re telling me and that’s why I’m opposing it.

“We need Labour to listen to the really valid concerns of the farming industry, farmers, tenant farmers and farming businesses as well, who supply machinery and have that kind of small business as well, to make sure that they are not doing something that can’t be taken back.”