Environment Secretary Steve Reed delivers a speech at the Country Land and Business Association rura (Image: PA)
Environment Secretary Steve Reed has refused to apologise to farmers for the “anguish” caused by its inheritance tax raid.
He said it is "hard to be sorry for trying to make the country's economy work" while speaking to journalists following a speech at the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) conference today.
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Farmers in the audience rolled their eyes and tutted when Mr Reed said he understood the plight of farmers and the government needed to get "stability" back into the economy.
The Cabinet Minister said: “We're taking decisions because they're in the interest of every part of the country.
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"It's hard to be sorry for trying to make this country's economy work and our public services work again."
His speech to farmers came days after around 13,000 people descended onto London to protest against Labour’s plans to impose inheritance tax on farms worth more than ￡1 million.
The Daily Express’s Save Britain’s Family Farms crusade has called for Chancellor Rachel Reeves to U-turn on the decision.
Mo Metcalf-Fisher, director of external affairs at the Countryside Alliance said: "The tone from Ministers is becoming increasingly obtuse and doing little to calm the feelings of hurt, anger and betrayal that many in the farming community feel.
"Labour MPs representing rural seats, many for the first time, need to stand up for their constituents and publicly urging the Treasury to rethink this policy. Otherwise they risk this debacle becoming a running sore in the party's relationship with the countryside".
Opening the CLA’s rural business conference, the organisation’s president Victoria Vyvyan warned: “Farmers, landowners and businesses in the rural economy are facing a very bleak future, if we have one at all.”
One farmer grilled Mr Reed on how many people would have to take their own lives before he realised the “wretchedness” of Ms Reeves’s decision.
In response, he said he wanted to listen to understand how the Government could make the changes easier to bear.
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In his speech he also reiterated the Government’s insistence that the vast majority of farming families would not be affected by the inheritance tax changes, in the face of analysis by the CLA that 70,000 UK farms could face paying the tax over the coming years.
Mr Reed said: “The truth is hard data, independently verified, shows that the vast majority of claimants will still pay nothing, but the reforms will raise money that will help fix the public services that rural and farming communities rely on just as much as anyone else in the country,” he said.
He said he was “struck” by how many people described the budget issues that brought them out onto the streets of London on Tuesday as “the final straw”.
“Those straws have been piling up for many decades now, they are the frustrations of rural communities across Britain who feel misunderstood, neglected and frankly disrespected.
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“This isn’t just about tax or even just about farming, important though those things are, it is about a whole community demanding to be treated with respect.”
The Environment Secretary added: “I heard the anguish of the countryside on the streets of London earlier this week.
“We may not agree over the inheritance tax changes, but this Government is determined to listen to rural Britain and end its long decline.