Dear Chancellor
I write regarding the changes to Inheritance Tax Relief for Agricultural Land announced by the Government in your Budget of October 2024.
Under my predecessor, Roger Gough, a motion was passed in a full council meeting in opposition of these changes and recognising the monumental importance of farming to the local economy of Kent. The Council resolved to commend the hard work and resilience of Kent's farmers and to acknowledge the important contribution that Kent farms make to the overall food security of the United Kingdom.
As the newly elected Leader of KCC, I am writing to convey my dismay that despite many months of loud and sustained protest by our farmers and their workers, you and your government have continued with this disastrous inheritance tax plan which in my view is nothing short of daylight robbery.
Our farmers here in Kent, the garden of England, tell me that thanks to your policy, they are being advised by their accountants that their tax bills could run to hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds because of the value of their land and buildings.
“Despite many months of loud and sustained protest by our farmers and their workers, you and your government have continued with this disastrous inheritance tax plan which in my view is nothing short of daylight robbery.”
At the recent Kent County Show, I had the opportunity to speak directly to the farming community who told me how worried they were. One particularly concerned resident told me of a farmer who had considered ending their life prematurely before the changes are implemented to avoid being a burden to their family. I am sure that you didn't deliberately set out to cause such stress to our elderly farmers, but these consequences are real.
Most farmers are asset-rich but cash poor, something that the city-dwellers in Parliament often fail to appreciate. They work seven days a week, 365 days a year, out in all weathers and at the mercy of wildly fluctuating prices for grain, feed, fuel and fertiliser. The one benefit of such a lifestyle used to be that if they "died with their wellies on" they could pass the farm onto an heir to ensure that the legacy continued. You have effectively removed the one thing that makes such a back-breaking and stressful existence a valid choice.
I would urgently ask you to reconsider and am very happy to discuss further and extend an invitation to Kent for you to meet with me and visit some of our outstanding farming enterprises to better understand the importance of this sector, the hardworking families at its heart and the irreversible implications of your proposed changes.
Yours sincerely
Linden Kemkaran
Leader of Kent County Council
