Conservatives demand urgent IHT reversal ahead of Budget

The Conservative Party has warned British farming is reaching breaking point, using an emergency summit at a Buckinghamshire farm to demand the UK government reverse its proposed family farm tax in next week’s Budget.

Party leader Kemi Badenoch and shadow Defra secretary Victoria Atkins told delegates that Labour’s looming farm inheritance tax (IHT) policy was already inflicting severe emotional and financial strain on farmers, despite not yet having been implemented.

Mrs Badenoch said chancellor Rachel Reeves was warned that introducing the tax would be a “terrible mistake”, and it was already creating “havoc and misery” across rural Britain.

See also: Fairer Family Farming campaign urges government IHT rethink

“Next week, we will see whether Rachel Reeves has the courage to undo the mess that she made last year,” Mrs Badenoch said.

She stressed that the gathering at Fleet Marston Farm, Aylesbury, was not routine. “This is not a farming summit, it is an emergency farming summit, because it’s absolutely critical that people have farmers in their minds for next week, when the Budget happens.”

Mrs Badenoch also issued a broader warning that policymakers had lost sight of the contribution farming makes to rural life and national resilience.

“A lot of people either – even in or around rural communities – don’t understand or don’t care. But I also know that the government doesn’t understand and doesn’t care. We understand and we care,” she said.

Mrs Badenoch pledged that the first thing a future Conservative government would do is scrap the family farm tax.

“We want to create a flourishing farming sector – not one where the next generation is giving up because it is too hard,” said Mrs Badenoch.

Food production pledge

Ms Atkins, Conservative MP for Louth and Horncastle, said a future Conservative government would put food production “at its core”. The current situation had grown “very serious”, she added, citing rising food prices, record farm closures and escalating costs.

She delivered the summit’s most harrowing intervention, warning of mounting human consequences of the family farm tax. “The human costs of that terrible tax are being felt already,” said Ms Atkins, recounting cases relayed by an agricultural chaplain in Suffolk.

“The father with small children who has taken his own life because of fears from the tax… the 92-year-old grandmother who has told her family very calmly that she will not be with us in April… the teenage boy who walked in to discover his father’s body because of the tax.”

Ms Atkins vowed to take farmers’ proposals at the summit “in good faith” to ministers ahead of the Budget and urge them to implement these measures “to save British farming”.

Both Mrs Badenoch and Ms Atkins insisted the Conservatives “have farmers’ backs” and urged ministers to reconsider the policy before next week’s Budget, warning that the consequences for rural communities could become irreversible.

Government response

The UK government maintains that its farm IHT reforms are fair and will proceed as scheduled in April 2026.

A Treasury spokesman defended the policy, saying: “Right now 40% of agricultural property relief – worth £219m – goes to just 117 estates. Our reforms will channel that funding into vital public services.”

Host farmers warn of IHT toll

Andy, Elaine and Alex Hunter © MAG/Philip Case

Host farmer Andy Hunter and his son Alex spoke candidly to Farmers Weekly about the emotional and practical toll the proposed inheritance tax changes are having on farming families.

Choking back tears, Andy said: “The family farm tax is absolutely wrong. We eat, breathe and sleep farming, but where’s the future going?

“The mental health side of it is awful. It’s a journey we’re all on. I speak for people the length and breadth of the farming community… It’s the 85-year-old farmer who’s worked all his life, paid all his taxes and been advised to hang on until they die to pass on the farm.

“And here we are staring at an April backstop. It’s one of the most horrific tsunamis that is hitting our farming community.”

Alex urged chancellor Rachel Reeves to listen to farmers and reverse the tax. “You’re destroying lives, you’re destroying generations of work,” he said.

“There is, at the moment, no future I can see in UK agriculture, which is desperately, desperately sad.”