Hampshire farmers protest over inheritance tax changes

Alan Harting, an organiser for the National Farming Union (NFU), uttered the warning at a protest outside the Hampshire County Council (HCC) offices in Winchester on Thursday, November 28.

The protest came following the autumn budget, with Rachel Reeves introducing a cap on inheritance tax reliefs for farms, as well as a freeze of the farming budget.

Addressing the protesting farmers before a county council meeting, Mr Harting said: “The proposals from the government are going to cut agriculture off at the knees.”

Alan Harting (right) talking with the leader of Hampshire County Council Nick Adams-King (Image: Chris Atkinson) READ MORE: Hampshire farmers protest over inheritance tax and budget

He continued: “There is no point in me planting hedges, to make their targets because that will put the value of the farm up and my children will have to pay tax. They don’t understand quite what they’ve done. Also, there’s a human side to this. We are hearing of people who have worked their whole lives on their farms. They are in their 80s or 90s. They don’t have a pension, because their income comes from the farm.

“Some are considering taking their own lives before April 2026 so their children are not disinherited.”  

One farmer, Jonathan Janaway, of the 1,000-acre Manor Farm near Basingstoke, said he would have to sell 20 per cent of his land if the new budget goes ahead.

The 32-year-old told the Chronicle: “It is good that people are going to support us. I think the public do support us at the moment, and I would like to keep it that way.

“I would have to sell 20 per cent of my farm to be able to pay the tax. If I saved every penny the farm made at the moment, to the age of 75, I’d still be short, so the land would be sold to pay the tax.

Kate Baylis, 64, from Folley Farm in North Waltham, said: “I want to stand up for the little things. Farms are hubs of their communities. They have a vital role in education, and teaching children where their food comes from. Letting them visit the countryside and see how we operate – that is vitally important.

Kate Baylis (Image: Chris Atkinson) “We can contribute to tackling the climate crisis, the environment crisis, the bio-diversity, nature recovery – farming is all part of that. If the government looked and asked us, we hold a lot of the answers for that sort of thing, and can contribute hugely.

“Hampshire has an absolute wealth of local producers, and farms have a vital role in supporting them. A lot of farms are producers as well. I want to put that side forward – we can argue until we are blue in the face about inheritance tax, and that is hugely important, but there’s also the smaller things that farms contribute to rural communities.”

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Ed Stevens (Image: Chris Atkinson) Ed Stevens, 29, from the 300-acre Long Barrow Farm, near Whitchurch, said: “We are in a situation where the majority of the land we farm is still held in the ownership of my grandmother, so I’m in a position where I will inherit from her. Unfortunately, the tax bill we would be hit with, because the value of our land is so disproportionate to the value of the food that we can produce, the tax bill is not sustainable based purely on food production.

“Our hands are tired in terms of what we can generate from the farm, we can’t charge more for our food because it’s traded on the world market, so we can’t put the prices up to cover the costs. I think what Labour has done has targeted the wrong people.”

He continued: “We’re really grateful for the support we’ve got, we just hope that the Labour Party realise that people are in a hard environment and they do the right thing. The public needs farmers three times a day, and there is no avoiding that.”