Starmer says most farmers won’t be affected by inheritance tax change as Clarkson tells rally it’s a ‘hammer blow’ – UK politics live

Starmer rejects claim inheritance tax plan amounts to class war, and says 'vast majority' of farmers won't be affected

Jessica Elgot

Keir Starmer has said he is “very confident” that the “vast majority” of farmers will nto be affected by the extension of inheritance tax. In an interview in Brazil, where he is attending the G20 summit, he told the BBC:

If you take a typical case, which is parents who want to pass on their farm to one of their children … by the time you’ve built in the other income tax thresholds, it’s only those with assets over £3m that would begin to pay inheritance tax, and that’s why I’m very confident that the vast majority of farms will be totally unaffected.

He also said rural communities needed the extra investment the budget would fund.

I also say this; I know that in rural communities – I grew up in one – we also need really good schools, really good hospitals, and we need houses that people could afford to live in, and they were the measures that we invested heavily in the budget.

In an interview with Sky News, asked if he was waging “class war” on wealthy landowners, Starmer replied

Look, It isn’t at all what we’re doing. It’s a balanced approach. We have to fill a black hole which was left by the last government.

Keir Starmer at Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

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Sarah Bool (Con) asked why the government had chosen £1m as the threshold where farms will start to pay inheritance tax. She suggested it should be higher.

Reed said that, taking into account other allowances, a couple with farm could avoid inheritance tax on sales up to £3m. He said people might find it hard to justify people someone inheriting property worth more than £3m not paying inheritance tax.

The Commons environment committee had to suspend proceedings for a while, because there was a division in the chamber.

When proceedings resumed, in response to a question from the Lib Dem MP Sarah Dyke, the environment secretary Steve Reed said that last year more than half of farmland was sold to non-farmers. And he said the price of farmland was rising above inflation. He said this trend had been going on for a while. He went on:

I suspect a part of that is being driven by wealthy individuals who are buying up agricultural land potentially as a means to avoid inheritance tax liability.

And some of them will be very open about that. If you’re listening to tax advisers or tax consultants, some of them will freely give this opinion in public; one of the best ways to shield a large amount of money from inheritance tax is to buy agricultural land.

He said that when agricultural property relief was established (the inheritance tax exemption), it was not there to help people like this.

Health minister Stephen Kinnock says he will back assisted dying bill

Stephen Kinnock, the health secretary, has said he will vote in favour of the assisted dying bill next week, arguing that it is the “compassionate” thing to do and will not automatically place NHS palliative care services under extreme pressure. Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot have the story.

Just Stop Oil joins NFU rally, but says crisis in farming 'about so much more than inheritance tax'

Farmers have managed to get an unlikely coalition of people supporting them. It is no surprise that rightwing parties like the Conservatives and Reform UK and on their side, along with Jeremy Clarkson. But they have also got Greenpeace in their corner (see 11.35am) – and Just Stop Oil. In a column two years ago Clarkson referred to them as “eco-herberts” and “halfwits”. Today they joined him at the NFU rally.

Today, Just Stop Oil Supporters joined the Farmers’ March in solidarity with agricultural workers demanding a future.

Farmers are being failed by government policies, cheap imports and supermarket greed, while the climate crisis threatens to destroy food production entirely.

If we want a future worth inheriting, we must end fossil fuel extraction by 2030.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the group said farming was facing a crisis that went beyond inheritance tax.

Food production, the rural and urban economies, our health, education and transport systems have been designed for a climate that no longer exists. There is no evidence that farming can survive the 2C of heating that is now predicted for the 2030’s. That’s everyone’s inheritance down the pan. That’s why there are 24 people in prison who stood up to demand a decent future for all of us.

Just Stop Oil recognises that UK farmers are going to be on the sharp end as we enter this era of consequences. Farmers and farming cannot adapt to a future in which the weather will be either too hot, too dry, too wet or too cold to grow food. The crisis in farming is about so much more than inheritance tax, it’s about political elites betraying ordinary people.

Many farmers 'wrong' to think they will be affected by inheritance tax extension, Reed tells MPs

Steve Reed, the environment secretary, has just started giving evidence to the Commons environment committee, and he is currently being asked about the Treasury figures saying Defra figures about the value of farms overstates the number of people affected by the extension of inheritance tax. (See 12.20pm and 2.39pm.)

Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem MP who chairs the committee, put it to Reed that most of the farmers who turned up at the rally today think they will be affected. He asked: “Are they wrong?”

Reed replied:

Assuming these projections from HMRC, validated by the OBR and the IFS are correct, then many of them, probably happily, are wrong.

He said that there were things that people can do to manage their tax affairs to reduce or avoid an inheritance tax liability.

He said that he accepted figures that were being bandied around about how many farmers would be affected were “very, very frightening”. But he said it was wrong just to look at figures showing the value of farms and then “draw a straight line to an inheritance tax liability”. He went on:

You can’t do that because ownership is much more complex than one person, one farm, and when you take into account these other factors, as the Treasury has done, as the OBR has done, as the IFS have done, they all say that less than 500 [estates] would be affected a year.

The Labour MP Torsten Bell, former chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, has objected to the use of the word “claims” in the headline on the post at 12.20pm. He has posted this on Bluesky.

It’s not a claim - it’s a fact. We can see from actual inheritance tax claims the numbers who would previously have been affected. Trying to distract from that by pointing to data on something else (farm values NOT who owns/passes on what) makes sense for lobbyists but is nonsense

Starmer restates his desire for ministers to stay neutral in assisted dying debate, in implied rebuke to Streeting

Keir Starmer has restated his desire for the government to stay neutral on the assisted dying bill.

In an interview with Sky News, asked about comments from Wes Streeting that have been seen as a breach of the instruction that cabinet ministers should not be trying to sway the debate in parliament, Starmer said:

I don’t think pressure should be put on MPs … I think we need to stay neutral.

Asked if Streeting went to far, Starmer said he would not talk about individual ministers. Asked if he had spoken to Streeting about this issue, he said he spoke to “all of the cabinet all of the time, as you would expect”.

Starmer took a similar line in an interview with ITV. In both interviews his comments sounded like an implied rebuke to Streeting – albeit not a particularly strong one.

In another interview, Starmer said he had set out his views on this previously (he voted in favour of assisted dying in 2015 and he has said more recently he is still in favour, subject to proper safeguards) and he said people would see how he voted in the debate on Friday week.

Starmer declines to say if Ukraine will get approval to use Storm Shadow missiles to hit Russia

Keir Starmer has refused to say if Ukraine will be allowed to use Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK to hit targets in Russia. As the Guardian reported this morning, Ukraine is expected to get approval to fire these missiles into Russia now that Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.

But, when asked about this in an interview at the G20, Starmer sidestepped the question. He said:

My position has always been that Ukraine must have what it needs for as long as it needs. [Vladimir] Putin must not win this war. But look, forgive me, I’m not going to go into operational matters, because there’s only one winner if I do that, and that is Putin and it would undermine Ukrainian efforts.

Starmer rejects claim inheritance tax plan amounts to class war, and says 'vast majority' of farmers won't be affected

Keir Starmer has said he is “very confident” that the “vast majority” of farmers will nto be affected by the extension of inheritance tax. In an interview in Brazil, where he is attending the G20 summit, he told the BBC:

If you take a typical case, which is parents who want to pass on their farm to one of their children … by the time you’ve built in the other income tax thresholds, it’s only those with assets over £3m that would begin to pay inheritance tax, and that’s why I’m very confident that the vast majority of farms will be totally unaffected.

He also said rural communities needed the extra investment the budget would fund.

I also say this; I know that in rural communities – I grew up in one – we also need really good schools, really good hospitals, and we need houses that people could afford to live in, and they were the measures that we invested heavily in the budget.

In an interview with Sky News, asked if he was waging “class war” on wealthy landowners, Starmer replied

Look, It isn’t at all what we’re doing. It’s a balanced approach. We have to fill a black hole which was left by the last government.

Labour would bring back winter fuel payments in Scotland, says Anas Sarwar, but tapered so wealthy get less

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has pledged to reinstate universal winter fuel payments in Scotland should his party win the 2026 Holyrood election.

In a move that piles pressure on Rachel Reeves’ controversial policy, Sarwar said his plan would mean “a fairer system” for Scotland and show the public that “we have listened”.

The pledge comes days before another set of council byelections in Glasgow and after polling suggesting the unpopularity of UK government policies is harming Scottish Labour’s vote. At the general election Scottish Labour was well ahead of the SNP, but now that lead has collapsed.

Sarwar said he had been “clear from the outset” that he thought Reeve’s pension credit threshold was too low and that he planned to reintroduce a universal payment for all pensioners, but tapered like child benefit is so that wealthier people receive less.

Winter fuel payment was set to be devolved to Scotland this year but, after Reeves’ announcement, the Scottish government said it had no option but to delay as it created a shortfall of £150m.

Sarwar denied that he was trying to distance himself from UK Labour policy, saying:

This is about recognizing that we have got to find a Scottish solution to this problem.

I’ve always been clear that we will take a different approach where I think it’s appropriate.

In Scotland, we took a different approach, for example, on how we supported our trade union movement on picket lines. We obviously took a much earlier and strong view on the conflict in the Middle East, a position supported now by our colleagues across the UK, and we have a different view around the threshold for this payment.

Kaleb Cooper and Charlie Ireland, who both work with Jeremy Clarkson on his farm and who both star alongside him in Amazon Prime’s Clarkson’s Farm, have also been attending the rally. Cooper is the farm manager, and Ireland is the land agent. Both of them are competent professionals who have to manage Clarkson’s chaotic uselessness (or at least that is the way they all present on TV), which is why the show fits so well into the British master/servant comedy genre.

Cooper said the inheritance tax changes were unfair on farmers who wanted to leave something to their families. He told PA Media:

We want our younger ones to take on our farms, our heritage.

And for example, for me, I haven’t got a farm to pass down but I have got a business that I’ve grown since I was 16 years old, so to pass that on to my child now I’m going to get taxed on that.

And actually, can he afford to take that business on? And if he has to then sell two tractors, for example, to pay that tax bill, is that going to be unprofitable to actually then make sure you have a livelihood off that business?

And Ireland said the government did not understand farmers.

The government have been in place for three or four months and come out and basically said this is how we want to deal with the farming in the countryside.

The strength of feeling comes from, gosh they’ve missed that by a country mile. They’re so far removed from actually the business of farming and the day to day operation.

Clarkson addresses rally, saying budget delivered 'hammer blow' to farmers and urging ministers to back down

Jeremy Clarkson is now speaking at the rally.

He says he was unsympathetic to farmers when he lived in London. But since he started farming himself, he has learned how “unbelievably difficult” it is, he says.

(His speech is interrupted by someone saying a person at the rally needs medical attention.)

He says the costs for farmers are huge. A tractor can cost £200,000, he says.

You get people saying, well, I shouldn’t pay that. I can get a chicken from abroad. Yes, you can … it’s full of chlorine, it tastes like a swimming pool with a beak.

And he says the budget hit farmers really hard.

I know a lot of people all across the country and all walks of life took a bit of a kick on the shin with that budget. You lot got a knee in the nuts and a hammer blow to the back of the head.

Clarkson mentions other costs imposed on farmers in the budget – such as pickup trucks being classified as company cars, which he claims amounts to a 211% tax rise – and then he turns to the claim that only 73% of farms will be affected. (See 12.20pm.) He asks people in the crowd to put their hands up. And then he asks anyone unaffected by the change to lower their hand. It looks as if all the hands stay up.

After joking about being “off my tits on codeine and paracetamol” (he’s not feeling well), Clarkson ends with a message to the government. He does not want to make it a “shouty” one, he says.

I beg the government to be big, to accept that this was rushed through. It wasn’t thought out, and it’s a mistake. That’s the big thing to do – admit it and back down.

Clarkson denies buying farm primarily to avoid inheritance tax – despite having said in past he did

Jeremy Clarkson has denied buying a farm primarily to avoid inheritance tax.

Even though in the past he has publicly given this as a key reason for his decision to buy his Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire (named after the amount of profit the farm supposedly produces – not the inheritance tax he intended to pay), Clarkson claimed today that he only wrote about buying a farm for tax reasons (see 11.20am) because he did not want to admit the real reason.

Asked about the past comment, he told PA Media:

That’s actually quite funny because the real reason I bought the farm was because I wanted to shoot, so I thought if I told a bunch of people that I bought a farm so I could shoot pheasants it might look bad.

So, I thought I better come up with another excuse, so I said inheritance tax. I actually didn’t know about inheritance tax until after I bought it. I didn’t mind, obviously, but the real reason I bought it is because I wanted to shoot.

Clarkson also accused the government of using a “blunderbuss’ to try to get money out of people using farms as a tax dodge and he urged the government to think again. He told PA Media:

If [Rachel Reeves] would have wanted to take out the likes of James Dyson and investment bankers and so on, she would have used a sniper’s rifle, but she’s used a blunderbuss and she’s hit all this lot.

It was – as I understand it – it was a very rushed last-minute decision and I think we all make mistakes in life, and I think it’s time for them to say ‘you know what, we’ve cocked this one up a bit’ and back down.