It was still dark when Tom Lucas, 16, called in sick to college, climbed into his 1970 Massey Ferguson tractor and headed to London at 16 miles per hour.
Lucas, a young farmer from Cambridgeshire, said that the “heartbreaking” prospect of his family losing the farm they have held for generations had pushed him to make the eight-hour drive by tractor to join a protest against planned changes to inheritance tax relief for farmers.
His was one of hundreds of tractors, farm vehicles and even tanks parked bumper to bumper on Whitehall yesterday, as farmers continue to campaign against the new tax rules.
Labour has insisted that it will not make a U-turn on its plans to introduce a 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million.
However, the plans have drawn unprecedented ire from farmers and the food industry. All major supermarkets have backed the National Farmers Union’s call to reverse the policy and thousands of farmers have descended on London in multiple marches since the budget in November.
The protest on Monday was organised by the campaign group Save British Farming, whose founder, Liz Webster, has previously said that the government has “unleashed a really nasty culture war with their budget”.
Lucas, who described his eight-hour drive to London as “f***ing uncomfortable” and expects to be home at about 3am on Tuesday, started his own contracting business while still at school. He bought his first tractor — the one he had driven to London — on his 15th birthday to start the business, and now owns two.
His family own a small arable farm in Cambridgeshire, which has been in the family for about a century.
“It’s awful, absolutely awful,” Lucas said. “If I want to take over our little family farm, which is 130 acres, then I’ll have to find quite a lot of money.
“What I would pay towards the inheritance tax is less than I’d turn over a year. It would take us five years to pay that off, and you should be taking a wage out of it yourself.
“I don’t know any farmers who take a wage themselves. They’re all just working for the love of it.”
He added: “My great grandad started it [the farm], then it was my grandfather, then uncle and hopefully in the future it would be mine. But if it goes the way it’s going, we just don’t know … it is heartbreaking.”
Richard Shepherd and his wife, Zoe, are in line to inherit his family’s dairy farm in Cheshire from his parents, Ivan and Judy. All four of them had come to Westminster.
Their dairy farm is facing an inheritance bill of £1 million, he said. “The problem is that we sell a lot to help pay that and all of a sudden we start losing our working capital to actually produce the milk in our case, and carry on funding in the future.”
Shepherd added: “Unfortunately, our industry is already not making enough money in the first place to be able to raise funds, not only on ordinary day-to-day investments and to make a living, but then we have to have this inheritance tax as well. It will ultimately cripple the business around the country.”
He and Ivan explained that they had been up since 5am this morning and “did two or three hours” working on the farm before coming to the protest. Ivan added: “You don’t take time off.”
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James Hardstaff, who described himself as “way past retirement age” but still working, came from Nottinghamshire with his vintage tractor. Their farm near the village of Linby has been home to his family for more than 300 years, and he is the ninth generation to farm it.
Hardstaff hopes to pass his farm on to his son and grandchildren, but described the inheritance tax changes as a heritage tax. “It would have big implications on our family. It’s going to be rough,” he said.
His family farms a little over 2,000 acres, growing cereals, vegetables and sugar beet, but major increases in costs in recent years have left the family struggling.
“It’s not going to make it easy,” he said. “We’ve got this government for another four years and it’s not good at all for us. [The inheritance tax changes] just brought a lot of things to a head.”
