James Mackellar lives with three generations on a diversified farm near Princes Risborough (Image: GETTY/JONATHAN BUCKMASTER)
A small farm owner fears he may be forced to close his Buckinghamshire business as a result of Labour’s economic plans.
James Mackellar, who lives with three generations on his diversified family-run farm near Princes Risborough, feels the Government is treating him as the “enemy”.
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Orchard View Farm ploughs three-quarters of a million pounds worth of business into the local economy every year.
But Mr Mackellar has warned Labour’s “terrifying” plans could be disastrous for its future prospects.
And he warned Sir Keir Starmer he was willing to protest with other angry farmers later this month to “make our voices heard”.
Responding to Rachel Reeves’s Budget, he said: “I do not see it as a Budget for growth. Show me how it is. From a business owner’s point of view, it is absolutely not.
“The main impact for us will be the rise in the minimum wage and also the higher National Insurance contributions.
“The knock-on impact will be that I have to raise the wages of people who are already above minimum wage too.
“There is a big ripple effect throughout the whole business.
“We are looking at what we can afford in terms of employees because our wage bill is absolutely astronomical.”
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The 50-year-old father of two has sheep, pigs, a campsite, a cafe/farm shop and a butchery on his 28-acre plot.
He has roughly 14 staff on the books helping run the on-site amenities, with seven of them working full-time.
Even Mr Mackellar’s father, in his 80s, lends a hand with odd jobs and making things on the site.
He added: “I am looking at the long-term viability of the business. I do not know if I see a long-term future in doing what we do.
“We struggle to make money anyway. We turn over nearly ￡400,000 but currently as it stands it loses money.
“We are certainly not looking to hire any more staff and will be cutting opening hours unless we can find more savings and efficiencies which are hard to come by.
“We are going through a cost-cutting exercise, which means we are now no longer buying bread from our local bakery, which means we are having to compromise on our core values of supporting local – and that money is now not going into the local economy.”
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He also said they had been forced to “completely shelve” a ￡25,000 plan to expand the business by installing a new kitchen.
He said: “I am not hugely optimistic and usually I am. This has come on the back of five years of taking a pummelling as a business.
“We have survived Covid in a weakened state and what is being proposed now is going to lead to a further thinning out of staff.
“We may be forced to shut our business down and become landlords which is far easier.
“The terrifying thing is these new labour laws that are being brought in too. They are making us very wary of hiring.
“We are less able to absorb those impacts as a small business. There is a lot for us to be fearful of.
“The people making these policies have got no business knowledge. They are implementing a Labour ideology.
“As a land owner, you are treated as the enemy under this Labour ideology.”
Although he would not be impacted by the changes to agricultural property relief, he said: “If you want to destroy the fabric of the farming community then this is a damn good way to go about it.
“We should be supporting our farmers.”
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He warned it would have a knock-on effect on food production: “You can take money out of our pockets but when the peasants’ bellies are empty, that is when the revolt starts.”
Mr Mackellar concluded: “I can pretty much see the roof of Chequers from where I stand now over the hill from here.
“Maybe Sir Keir should leave his country house and come down and meet us and see what it is really like running a small rural business on the ground rather than treating us like the enemy.”