James Wright is a farmer, agri-tech entrepreneur and policy director of the Conservative Rural Forum. He stood as the parliamentary candidate at the 2024 general election.
Labour should never have picked this fight. Changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR), introduced in Labour’s first Budget in October 2024, exposed a weakness that runs deeper than farming. Without a plan or a driving ideology, they failed to rebuff Treasury Brain.
This month’s partial u-turn on the Family Farm Tax, which now sees the threshold rise from £1 million to £2.5 million, did not happen by accident, nor was it the product of a sudden outbreak of Labour sympathy for rural communities; it was caused by pressure applied, both publicly and privately.
The roots of the tax run longer than this Parliament. Civil servants hate things that don’t fit in boxes, and both APR and BPR are just those. Each budget, ministers would be presented with a list of possible tax rises, and each year that list included APR and BPR. As former Treasury minister Neil O’Brien MP pointed out, Conservative ministers knew well enough that the average family farm would be unable to afford the tax, and would say no.
When presented with the same proposal in the summer of 2024, Rachel Reeves’s team did not know enough to say the same. Either the Treasury was not challenged, or ministers did not ask the right questions. In either case, a policy rejected for years was waved through with barely a second thought.
This was never just about farms; farms were simply the most visible target. What was really being taxed was succession – the ability for family-run businesses to pass working assets from one generation to the next. That applies just as much to haulage firms, builders’ merchants, manufacturers, pubs, hotels, and engineering businesses as it does to agriculture. These are often asset-rich, cash-poor businesses that keep local economies going.
During the general election campaign, the Conservative manifesto contained a clear commitment to maintain APR and BPR. When it was suggested to the National Farmers Union that they may want to extract a similar commitment from Labour, we were told by some that we were “playing politics” and that private assurances had been given. Whilst Tom Bradshaw, their president, and his team deserve credit for their actions over the past year, had the NFU forced Labour to commit during the election, we might have avoided the last 14 months of heartbreak entirely.
A few days before the Budget, I warned CCHQ that a change might be coming and that we should be ready to launch a campaign against it. CCHQ’s digital team prepared a website and graphics – but on the afternoon of the Budget, it was blocked by a senior member of Rishi Sunak’s then-Shadow Cabinet, who believed this was a “mansion tax” trap set by Labour.
Thankfully, they were overruled and the petition was launched. It went on to be signed by over 250,000 people.
Not only did this give us a whip hand to beat Labour with, but it also gave us the email addresses and phone numbers of a quarter of a million people who cared deeply about this specific issue. The list has been used for recruiting new members and donors. The Family Farm Tax petition, hosted on whatlaboursaid.com, is now the model on which our petition campaigns are built.
It wasn’t just CCHQ that jumped into action. The Conservative Rural Forum and Conservative Councillor Associations worked together to arm councillors with the tools they needed to take the fight into council chambers. They went equipped with briefings, draft motions and press releases, and council chambers across the country debated the issue, ensuring coverage in local newspapers, on social media and regional news.
The polling and momentum was clear: the public backed farmers and family businesses over the Government.
There is no doubt the most powerful group in all of this were the farmers themselves. Getting a tractor to London is not cheap. Each low-loader trip costs around £150 each way, and a day off the farm has a real cost. Their constant protests across the country had the biggest impact of all, the activities groups like No Farmers No Food and the more militant Farmers To Action meant that Labour MPs could not ignore the feelings of the public.
Conservative MPs worked inside Parliament to ensure a constant stream of pressure on Labour MPs, through Early Day Motions, Urgent Questions, Committees and Opposition Day motions. Each time, the Government was forced to get its MPs to defend the indefensible. Without that sustained parliamentary pressure, nothing would have moved.
In her statement Labour’s latest decision, Kemi Badenoch spoke about being told earlier this year to drop the issue – that all the votes that could be secured had already been secured, and that it was time to move on. Yet part of the issue of why we didn’t deliver enough in 14 years of government was that we chased what was easy or superficially popular, rather than what was the right thing to do for the country.
Having now forced a partial u-turn, Badenoch has been vindicated. It goes to show what can be achieved when you stick to your guns.
Victoria Atkins and Robbie Moore have kept this issue alive more than anyone else; Andrew Griffith also deserves praise of fighting the corner of family businesses. November’s food and emergency summit, which saw over 100 farmers and much of the national press descend on a Buckinghamshire farm, would have cost the party thousands, that is one of hundreds of moments this year that kept this issue in the spotlight.
Labour should have listened to Michael Gove, who said politics goes wrong when it starts attacking the kinds of people children are taught to admire, the butcher, the baker, the people who make things and serve their communities. The damage for Labour is done, they won’t win these voters back with this change.
This does not mean we should kid ourselves. Some on Twitter would have you think we’re heading back to government tomorrow, I will not pretend we have done enough to earn the trust of the public.
But this campaign has shown that something has changed, we pushed on when the advice was to forget it, and we secured a significant victory on behalf of the people we should be standing up for, those family businesses that steward our land and produce our food. The shoots of renewal, one could say, have taken root.
James Wright is a farmer, agri-tech entrepreneur and policy director of the Conservative Rural Forum. He stood as the parliamentary candidate at the 2024 general election.
Labour should never have picked this fight. Changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR), introduced in Labour’s first Budget in October 2024, exposed a weakness that runs deeper than farming. Without a plan or a driving ideology, they failed to rebuff Treasury Brain.
This month’s partial u-turn on the Family Farm Tax, which now sees the threshold rise from £1 million to £2.5 million, did not happen by accident, nor was it the product of a sudden outbreak of Labour sympathy for rural communities; it was caused by pressure applied, both publicly and privately.
The roots of the tax run longer than this Parliament. Civil servants hate things that don’t fit in boxes, and both APR and BPR are just those. Each budget, ministers would be presented with a list of possible tax rises, and each year that list included APR and BPR. As former Treasury minister Neil O’Brien MP pointed out, Conservative ministers knew well enough that the average family farm would be unable to afford the tax, and would say no.
When presented with the same proposal in the summer of 2024, Rachel Reeves’s team did not know enough to say the same. Either the Treasury was not challenged, or ministers did not ask the right questions. In either case, a policy rejected for years was waved through with barely a second thought.
This was never just about farms; farms were simply the most visible target. What was really being taxed was succession – the ability for family-run businesses to pass working assets from one generation to the next. That applies just as much to haulage firms, builders’ merchants, manufacturers, pubs, hotels, and engineering businesses as it does to agriculture. These are often asset-rich, cash-poor businesses that keep local economies going.
During the general election campaign, the Conservative manifesto contained a clear commitment to maintain APR and BPR. When it was suggested to the National Farmers Union that they may want to extract a similar commitment from Labour, we were told by some that we were “playing politics” and that private assurances had been given. Whilst Tom Bradshaw, their president, and his team deserve credit for their actions over the past year, had the NFU forced Labour to commit during the election, we might have avoided the last 14 months of heartbreak entirely.
A few days before the Budget, I warned CCHQ that a change might be coming and that we should be ready to launch a campaign against it. CCHQ’s digital team prepared a website and graphics – but on the afternoon of the Budget, it was blocked by a senior member of Rishi Sunak’s then-Shadow Cabinet, who believed this was a “mansion tax” trap set by Labour.
Thankfully, they were overruled and the petition was launched. It went on to be signed by over 250,000 people.
Not only did this give us a whip hand to beat Labour with, but it also gave us the email addresses and phone numbers of a quarter of a million people who cared deeply about this specific issue. The list has been used for recruiting new members and donors. The Family Farm Tax petition, hosted on whatlaboursaid.com, is now the model on which our petition campaigns are built.
It wasn’t just CCHQ that jumped into action. The Conservative Rural Forum and Conservative Councillor Associations worked together to arm councillors with the tools they needed to take the fight into council chambers. They went equipped with briefings, draft motions and press releases, and council chambers across the country debated the issue, ensuring coverage in local newspapers, on social media and regional news.
The polling and momentum was clear: the public backed farmers and family businesses over the Government.
There is no doubt the most powerful group in all of this were the farmers themselves. Getting a tractor to London is not cheap. Each low-loader trip costs around £150 each way, and a day off the farm has a real cost. Their constant protests across the country had the biggest impact of all, the activities groups like No Farmers No Food and the more militant Farmers To Action meant that Labour MPs could not ignore the feelings of the public.
Conservative MPs worked inside Parliament to ensure a constant stream of pressure on Labour MPs, through Early Day Motions, Urgent Questions, Committees and Opposition Day motions. Each time, the Government was forced to get its MPs to defend the indefensible. Without that sustained parliamentary pressure, nothing would have moved.
In her statement Labour’s latest decision, Kemi Badenoch spoke about being told earlier this year to drop the issue – that all the votes that could be secured had already been secured, and that it was time to move on. Yet part of the issue of why we didn’t deliver enough in 14 years of government was that we chased what was easy or superficially popular, rather than what was the right thing to do for the country.
Having now forced a partial u-turn, Badenoch has been vindicated. It goes to show what can be achieved when you stick to your guns.
Victoria Atkins and Robbie Moore have kept this issue alive more than anyone else; Andrew Griffith also deserves praise of fighting the corner of family businesses. November’s food and emergency summit, which saw over 100 farmers and much of the national press descend on a Buckinghamshire farm, would have cost the party thousands, that is one of hundreds of moments this year that kept this issue in the spotlight.
Labour should have listened to Michael Gove, who said politics goes wrong when it starts attacking the kinds of people children are taught to admire, the butcher, the baker, the people who make things and serve their communities. The damage for Labour is done, they won’t win these voters back with this change.
This does not mean we should kid ourselves. Some on Twitter would have you think we’re heading back to government tomorrow, I will not pretend we have done enough to earn the trust of the public.
But this campaign has shown that something has changed, we pushed on when the advice was to forget it, and we secured a significant victory on behalf of the people we should be standing up for, those family businesses that steward our land and produce our food. The shoots of renewal, one could say, have taken root.