Farmers have taken to the streets of Westminster on Budget day in a protest about inheritance tax, bringing tractors to Whitehall despite the Met Police banning agricultural machinery from the area.
A tractor is parked outside Parliament on Abingdon Street and more tractors were seen driving through Westminster early on Wednesday, with police stopping around 20 vehicles in the vicinity.
The protest is in response to the Chancellor’s plans to introduce a 20% rate on agricultural land and businesses worth more than £1m.
On Wednesday morning, farmers from around the Ƶ headed to London including one dressed as Father Christmas, with his tractor carrying a large spruce tree and bearing a sign that read: “Farmer Christmas – the naughty list: Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Diane Abbott, Angela Rayner & the BBC.”
The tractor was parked on Whitehall before Metropolitan Police officers intervened.
Farmer Mark Watler from Grantham, Lincolnshire, was among campaigners from the National Farmers’ Union gathered in Trafalgar Square.
The 50-year-old told the PA news agency: “The inheritance tax is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re not doing it for the money, it’s a passion. We just want a fair deal.”
He added: “I’ve grown up working on farms from the age of 12. It’s disheartening to see how we’re being treated.”
David Gunn, an arable farmer and agricultural contractor from near Sevenoaks in Kent, said he was protesting on Budget day for a number of reasons, including the Government move to put inheritance tax on larger farm businesses.
He said: “Inheritance tax is one reason, it’s going to cripple the farmers, the small family farmers. There’s all the other taxes they’ve been putting on us, and the prices we get for our produce and what it costs in the shop, we don’t make any money.
“Then there’s food security, farmers are going out of business.” He said his message to Government was “sort the pledge out”.
“You said in the manifesto you would look after the farmers, which you totally haven’t, you’ve ruined the countryside,” he said.
