Shotley farming family distraught at Budget tax hit

Harry's dad, Chris, who is in his fifties, has also been drilling but will cut his shift so that he can head off to Covent Garden at midnight to fetch fresh supplies for his farm shop for Saturday. He and his wife won't get back until 3am.

But the hard-working farming family fears the loss of a large chunk of the farm as a result of new inheritance tax rules.

Harry Suckling with the potato crop (Image: Lucy Taylor) They farm about 800 acres of land - 600 acres of which they own. Now, rather than being able to pass it on, the next generation will be hit with an eye-watering tax bill - as inheritors of farms will have to pay 20% of the value of the agricultural and business property above £1m.

The chancellor has calculated that 73% of farmers will inherit free and clear as they will be below the threshold - but farmers in Suffolk are scratching their heads at how this figure was arrived at.

In the past, working farmers have been exempt from inheritance tax so that their businesses can be passed down to the next generation and the industry preserved.

But that all changed on Wednesday, when chancellor Rachel Reeves slashed agricultural property relief (APR) and business property relief (BPR) for properties valued over £1m.

Suffolk farmers argue that the average price of working farms well exceeds that £1m - putting the future of their family farms at risk.

Harry and Chris Suckling (Image: Lucy Taylor) Harry - a fifth generation farmer - feels betrayed. 

"They promised in their manifesto they weren't going to do it and they have turned around and done it," he said. "They have not stuck to their word."

The repercussions of the decision will be enormous, he warned, and is hoping that with the help of the National Farmers' Union (NFU) farmers will be able to persuade the government to perform a u-turn.

"You lose us you lose a community - you lose a lot of food produced at reasonable money so it's going to hurt the consumer enormously," he said. 

The 73% figure cited by Ms Reeves is "absurd", he said.  "It should be more like 73% will be affected. On this peninsula, there's not a single farm that won't be affected."

Harry - who is chairman of Suffolk Young Farmers - has been involved in setting up a new young farmers' club for Melton. They met on Thursday night at his home. "It was all anyone could talk about," he said. 

The Sucklings' main crop is potatoes but they also grow barley, oilseed rape and wheat. 

"We are cash-poor and asset-rich," said Harry. "We would have to break away half the farm, sell it off just to pay the tax bill."

Without any warning, their plans for the farm are in tatters. 

Harry Suckling (Image: Lucy Taylor)

"It's a pretty dire state to be in," he said. "If all land was farmed by a few big people it would get into the wrong hands. The land would go fallow and food would have to be imported."

Farmers are already working on ever-tightening margins, he added. "It makes me feel worried for the future. We are not earning vast sums of money now and if we were having to sell off a quarter of our most valuable highly productive land what are we going to do?"

Chris described the tax bombshell as "absolutely horrendous". "For him (Keir Starmer) to say they are going to protect the working man - I don't know any farmers who aren't really, really hard-working," he said.

NFU resident Tom Bradshaw - who farms at Fordham, near Colchester - said farmers have been left reeling from the changes announced in the budget.

It demonstrated "a fundamental lack of understanding" of how the British farming sector works, he said.

“Farmers are rightly angry and concerned about their future and the future of their family farms, having been reassured by minsters in the lead up to the Budget that APR and BPR changes were not on the table," he added

“The Treasury’s figures which claim this will only affect one in four British farms are misleading. The £1m cap to APR shows how little this government understands the sector.

"Very few viable farms would be worth under £1m, but lots of smallholdings and houses with a few acres let for grazing might be.

"The asset value of genuine food-producing farms will be high, given the size they need to be to remain viable businesses; but that’s the value of the asset, it doesn’t reflect its profitability which is often, and increasingly so, very low."