Nottinghamshire farmers to park up in Newark Market Place to raise awareness of NFU ‘Stop the family farm tax’ campaign on national day of unity
Farmers are to again park up in Newark’s Market Place as they seek to ‘keep the pressure on politicians’ over the government’s inheritance tax plans.
Members of the Nottinghamshire NFU branch will be in the town centre from 12pm to 2pm on Saturday, January 25, as part of a national day of unity with the NFU, NFU Cymru, NFU Scotland, and the Ulster Farmers’ Union, which will see similar actions take place across the UK.
Farmers fear the new inheritance tax plan — which will see farms valued at over £1m taxed an additional 20% on every pound over this threshold upon the death of the current owner — will devastate family farms across the country.
In a bid to combat this, the union launched the ‘Stop the family farm tax’ campaign, and the awareness event this weekend will be the second held in Newark, with farmers having gathered to drum up support and hand out carrots for reindeer food in December.
Nottinghamshire NFU chairman Colin Bower, who himself is a third generation farmer, said: “[Saturday’s gathering] won’t be a big protest like there has been in London, it will be a public awareness event, similar to what we did pre-Christmas.
“We want to keep the public informed, and show how it is going to affect their food.”
Similar demonstrations will take places across towns in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with farmers gathering to thank the British public for their overwhelming support, and to underline to their parliamentarians that their campaign will not stop until the tax is subject to ‘consultation and proper scrutiny’.
In Newark, the public support has been said to be “fantastic”.
“The public seem to get how important their food is to them, and that they need family farms to produce it,” Colin added.
“We want to keep the pressure on the politicians to at least put it to consultation, obviously the figures they’re working with are not right.”
