𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Labour are waging war on the countryside. As Rachel Reeves was announcing higher taxes to pay for higher benefits in her Budget of broken promises last week, farmers were in Whitehall protesting, once again, against Labour’s disastrous farming policies.

The Family Farm and Family Business Taxes, which will make it impossible for many farmers and small firms to pass on their farms and businesses to their children, spell disaster for our rural communities and risk raising food prices even higher. By imposing inheritance tax on asset-rich but cash-poor families, Labour will force farmers to sell the farms passed down by their parents and grandparents simply to pay the Government’s benefits bill. These families face losing their way of life, their homes and their futures.

With this hapless Government so prone to U-turns, you might have expected a retreat from this awful policy by now, given the reasoned and well-argued opposition from farmers and Conservatives. But no – Labour suspended one of their MPs this week for voting against this vindictive tax.

Dozens of Labour MPs abstained, making clear their discomfort about taxing the death of the people we rely on to put food on our tables. But sadly, Labour’s front bench is not listening.

This assault on the countryside doesn’t stop there. Last year’s national insurance hike, the minimum wage increase, and a plethora of additional taxes are already causing record farm closures and are contributing to food price inflation.

Labour’s Employment Rights Bill piles on further burdens by making it harder to employ the seasonal workers many farms rely on, as well as forcing unionisation onto perfectly sound existing working relationships.

Labour have also scrapped the Rural Services Delivery Grant, introduced by the Conservatives to ensure remote areas received the support they needed. Removing this crucial lifeline will leave essential services underfunded.

And Labour is obsessed with concreting over our green and pleasant land. On the east coast, we’re in a battle to halt the industrialisation of prime agricultural and undeveloped land with pylons, solar plants, wind turbines and giant substations, including in my own Lincolnshire constituency. Labour’s Net Zero obsession is not only risking our food security but is adding to farmers’ costs, with soaring energy costs now four times higher than those in the US. The Government’s impossible plan for “Clean Power” by 2030 is being prioritised over the livelihoods of local people.

And meanwhile, the damage to the careful balance of nature – our wildlife, trees, soil, water, and air – is never talked about by this government. They are overseeing a shameful reversal of nature commitments, all in the name of Net Zero.

As a constituent said to me recently, “Why has this government got it in for the countryside?” The answer is that this city-dwelling, socialist government doesn’t care and doesn’t want to understand.

The Conservatives, however, do care and do understand. We have led the campaign in Parliament to axe the Family Farm and Business Taxes. We will always stand up for rural people. We know how hard farmers work to feed us and the challenges people in the countryside face.

We will axe Labour’s vindictive Family Farm and Family Business Taxes and help protect farming from generation to generation.

And we want to do more.

Rural communities have told us they need less red tape and more freedom in their lives. For example, Defra has 34 arms-length bodies, so we will review each and every one and rein in the ones that get in the way of rural communities.

We will also get fuel costs down, helping farmers and residents who are struggling with soaring energy bills. Through our Cheap Power Plan, we will cut energy bills by axing the Carbon Tax, scrapping wind and solar subsidies, replacing the Climate Change Act, and promoting new North Sea drilling.

And we will make rural communities safer by tackling rural crime.

Stolen tractors, stolen tools and stripped vehicles are a scandal – yet courts often treat these cases as minor offences. So, we will ensure tougher sentencing for tool and agricultural vehicle theft, create Rural Crime Taskforces to clamp down on offenders, and shut down the markets criminals use to profit.

Together, these measures will help restore pride in our countryside and support the businesses that keep it moving.

The Conservative team under Kemi Badenoch know that a stronger countryside makes a stronger country. We care and we will always stand up for rural communities.