'Taxes strangling our family farms haven't been touched': Budget branded 'missed opportunity for rural reset' by agriculture body
A farming body has branded today’s budget a “missed opportunity” failing to tackle tax hikes that have plunged three-quarters of the industry into serious fears for their future.
The Ulster Farmers’ Union argue that agriculture has been largely treated as an afterthought in the first budget delivered by Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey, with little help to farmers despite MPs being lobbied about financial shadows increasingly falling across it over the past few weeks.
Union president John McLenaghan was in Westminster this week, hoping to shine a light on the difficulties being stacked against Northern Ireland’s farmers and propose ways the government could help in the autumn budget.
As he told the News Letter, however: “This is a disappointment, an opportunity lost in many ways.
"We were watching the budget in our headquarters waiting for him to mention agriculture, to mention Northern Ireland, and there was precious little on the issues most impacting us.”
The body he heads brought “a number of massive issues facing the farming and food sector” to the attention of politicians, he stated, hoping Mr Healey would address at least some in today’s UK-wide tax and spending plan.
“Instead, he dodged all of them,” said Mr McLenaghan, stating that an inheritance tax hike that came into effect earlier this year has had a major impact in both financial and psychological terms, as anxious families now worry if they’ll be able to afford death rates placed on their land.
“We hoped that he’d pick up on that, and the position that if he wanted to truly deliver on food security he’d support our family farms,” he said. “He had an opportunity to demonstrate that, but he hasn’t taken it.
“Over the past few months, we’ve heard talk of the Prime Minister needing a ‘rural reset’ of relations with the countryside. Instead, a tax burden imposed by the previous Labour government [under Sir Keir Starmer] hasn’t been touched.”
The budget does include an extension of a cut in duty on red diesel. Now to last until the end of June next year, officials state the move will “continue to provide breathing space to agriculture”.
For Mr McLenaghan, it’ll be cold comfort to Ulster families struggling with spiralling costs on top of the looming expense of increased inheritance tax.
“The red diesel move is welcome, but it’s a six-month extension,” he said. “It’s very short-term and it in no way compensates for the significant rises in costs we’ve seen so far, with more predicted further to come. There was much more he could’ve done to demonstrate intent to help our industry but he chose not to.”
But the union, he pledged, will continue the battle for its members, stressing the need to fight against an inheritance tax hike that’s “strangling our industry and will be extremely difficult for our farming families and succession within farms”.
He promised: “If we didn’t get it this budget, we’ll be back at the next making the same arguments.
“The passage of time will make this situation worse, not easier. The longer this goes on, the more real it will become as more and more family farms are devastated by its effects.
“We continue to fight on farmers’ behalf. The situation is not viable, it’s an unjust taxation that cannot stand.”