A councillor for the Eden area will call on the government to consider the impact of various actions on the farming community ‘as a whole’ at a council meeting on January 23 at Kendal Town Hall.
The motion proposed by councillor Baker reads: “This Council notes with concern a series of Government actions over the last year that have adversely affected family farms. Including:
“This Council resolves to ask the Leader to write to the Secretary of State for DEFRA and the Deputy Prime Minister to ask that the effects of these various actions on the farming community be considered as a whole.”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced in the budget that from April 2026 inherited agricultural assets worth more than £1 million, which were previously exempt, will have to pay inheritance tax at a 20 per cent rate.
The government said the tax could be paid over 10-year instalments with the Treasury estimating the proposed changes will raise £520 million.
Ms Reeves said: “This will ensure we continue to protect small family farms, with three quarters of claims unaffected by these changes.”
In December in Parliament, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron told ministers that policies enacted by the previous Conservative Government, and continued by the new Labour administration, were actively disincentivising farmers from producing food.
Mr Farron said: “Farmers in my communities and across the country are genuinely devastated by the Government’s family farm tax, which will affect many in my patch who are on less than the minimum wage, and by the 76% cut in the basic payment next year.
“Perhaps what dismays farmers across our country and in Westmorland even more is that the overall agricultural policy of this Government and their Conservative predecessors is to actively disincentivise farmers from producing food, despite the fact that this country produces only 55 per cent of the food we need.
“That is a dereliction of duty by both main parties, and a threat to national security. What plans does the Secretary of State have to change his policy and back our farmers to produce food.”
In response the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Steve Reed told Parliament the government wants farmers to ‘succeed’.
Mr Reed said: “The honourable gentleman raises a number of important points. I will repeat my earlier comments about agricultural property relief: the last year for which we have data available shows that the vast majority of claimants will not pay anything.
“Unlike the previous Government, who thought that farmers were not in it for the money, we want them to succeed, so we are embarking on a farming road map and a new deal for farming that will consider supply chain fairness and stop farmers being undercut in trade deals such as the one the Conservatives agreed with Australia and New Zealand. Our intention is to make farming profitable for the future.”
The motion will be discussed by councillors on January 23 at Kendal Town Hall.
report by Dan Hunt (Local Democracy Reporting Service)
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