How do Labour's inheritance tax policies support sustainable agriculture in Britain?

[LMcD]

I hope the Chancellor reads your post of yesterday evening, oddoneout,and introduces a new tax for grouse moors etc.!

Perhaps she might do something if she receives more grouses.

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps she might do something if she receives more grouses.

You could be right - Rachel Reeves being no pheasant plucker.

[vinteuil]

Perhaps she might do something if she receives more grouses.

... I think the plural is 'grice'. At least that's what it sounds like in the shooting season

[Serial_Apologist]

... I think the plural is 'grice'. At least that's what it sounds like in the shooting season

[LMcD]

... I think the plural is 'grice'. At least that's what it sounds like in the shooting season

'Grouses' seems to be the form normally used for complaints.

[vinteuil]

'Grouses' seems to be the form normally used for complaints.

... but not used on grice moors

[oddoneout]

... I think the plural is 'grice'. At least that's what it sounds like in the shooting season

As is the singular. Makes life much simpler...

[oddoneout]

Something I found out earlier today, which won't have helped in all this, is that apparently Steve Reed(Sec of State Defra), when shadow SoS Defra, told both the NFU and CLA* conferences that Labour would not change IHT tax relief, the CLA assurance being in response to a direct question. It was not mentioned in the manifesto. It's the black hole of course, but that becomes more problematic when there's a U-turn involved, rather than just coming out of the blue for everyone.


*What I still know as Country Landowners Association, but now apparently Country Land and Business Association

[Maclintick]

That’s Guy Singh -Watson is pretty well bang on the money.

....& ends his excellent Guardian article thus: "For those who are pushing the hardest against this change to inheritance tax, don’t be fooled: they don’t represent farmers, they represent the super-rich who don’t want to contribute their fair due, and are simply buying up our country to keep more money and assets for themselves". No doubt he'll be portrayed as a Labour stooge and a traitor to landed interests in the right-wing media who are, true to form, performing their immemorial service to wealth, as precisely articulated by Aneurin Bevan -- "How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century " -- & now in the 21st, of course. What are the odds of Guy Singh-Watson being invited onto "Question Time" tomorrow, I wonder ?

[gradus]

I think it wrong and unfair to compel farmers to sell land holdings that have remained in the same family for generations, an important part of our diverse culture and social structure, because they have insufficient funds to pay IHT or can only do so by selling off land to those who can afford it, thus destroying the integrity of their holding and quite probably pushing the farm from a little over break-even - commonly the case - into loss. How is a farmer making little more than the national minimum wage supposed to find the money? I am however heartened by the PM's assertion that IHT can be stretched from £1m to £3m, thereby exempting many farms - presumably 69,500 given govt figures - from tax if they can jump through the exemption hoops, not I suggest an easy thing especially for elderly farmers who may not have 7 years left in which to whittle down the taxman's demands, despite it being quite usual for farmers to carry on working into old age.
The Riverford owner has some interesting arguments in favour of the proposals but he is a multi-millionaire and can easily afford what is being asked, not I think the usual financial position on most family farms.

[LMcD]

... but not used on grice moors

Are you suggesting that the Chancellor is a game bird?

[Maclintick]

Something I found out earlier today, which won't have helped in all this, is that apparently Steve Reed(Sec of State Defra), when shadow SoS Defra, told both the NFU and CLA* conferences that Labour would not change IHT tax relief, the CLA assurance being in response to a direct question. It was not mentioned in the manifesto. It's the black hole of course, but that becomes more problematic when there's a U-turn involved, rather than just coming out of the blue for everyone.

"Who said what when ?" is an interesting game, isn't it ? Minette Batters vowed to "hold Boris Johnson's feet to the fire" over pledges he made to the farming community to recompense them for the loss of EU subsidies and to ease their passage into the post-Brexit nirvana, after which he negotiated a disastrous Australian deal which even Liz Truss disowned -- see comments by farmer and former Cornish Tory MP George Eustace:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63627801

Those with short attention-spans will also have forgotten motorway-adjacent farmers' fields plastered with pro-Brexit billboards during the build-up to the referendum. Turkeys voting for Christmas, perhaps ?

[LMcD]

Those with short attention-spans will also have forgotten motorway-adjacent farmers' fields plastered with pro-Brexit billboards during the build-up to the referendum. Turkeys voting for Christmas, perhaps ?

'We was misled!' (NFU spokesperson).

[french frank]

Those with short attention-spans will also have forgotten motorway-adjacent farmers' fields plastered with pro-Brexit billboards during the build-up to the referendum. Turkeys voting for Christmas, perhaps ?

It seems to me that there are ample signs - everywhere - that as the technology juggernaut lumbers on human intelligence degrades.

[oddoneout]

'We was misled!' (NFU spokesperson).

Well they were, along with the rest of the electorate. Actually, lied to is more accurate IMO. A lot of that was the result of government pig-ignorance of the workings of the EU, as became horribly apparent as soon as engagement with the negotiators in Brussels began. Those lies were not challenged, indeed they were made use of, simply continuing the entrenched "everything is the fault of the EU" mindset.
If one has no reason to think that the body which claims to be running the country is in fact doing nothing of the sort, (and in fact hadn't been for a long time,thanks to the tiresome details being dealt with by negotiation with European partners "over there") then there isn't the prompt to question what is being sold, or at least not enough of one. There were those who knew otherwise but they weren't listened to, especially if they were known for taking the line that actually some at least of the things that didn't work so well in the UK were the choice/decision of the government, not the EU.
The lack of everyday information in England about what the country got from membership of the club meant there was no counter to the "we pay in squillions and get nothing back" complaint. Projects funded or supported by EU funds didn't get publicity, or if the star circle and a bit of text appeared it was invariably tiny and tucked away. I couldn't help noticing the big roadside boards when visiting family in Scotland that made it quite clear the part that EU funding played in the good quality roads.
Due to my own activities and interests over many years(starting with micro-scale food producing for a local market more than 30 years ago) I was perhaps more aware of the extent to which things were not as we were told. Family connections also provided other views from across the Channel. Many of the everyday irritations that were blamed on 'European rules' were in fact down to UK bodies gold-plating and/or mis-applying regulations, and also not differentiating correctly between what was advisory and what was mandatory.