Food shortage plans drawn up as farmers threaten to strike

Ministers are drawing up contingency plans to deal with food shortages if farmers go on strike over the Treasury’s inheritance tax raid on farms.

Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) would set out contingency plans to ensure food security over the winter and summer.

It came as an environment minister urged farmers to “look calmly” at government tax plans that will see farming assets worth more than £1 million hit with a 20 per cent levy when inherited.

Farmers plan to descend on London in their thousands on Tuesday to protest against plans that they claim will destroy or break up family farms across the country.

Some farmers are threatening to go on strike and stop food production to give ministers a taste of what it would be like if the UK food-producing sector were no longer operating.

The threat has raised concerns about empty supermarket shelves this winter and potential panic-buying, last seen at the start of the Covid pandemic when people began to stockpile food at home.

On Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the presenter asked Ms Haigh about these concerns. She replied: “Of course, Defra will be setting out plans for the summer, for the winter – and setting out … contingency plans, and ensuring that food security is treated as the priority it deserves to be.”

On Saturday, Sir Keir Starmer used a speech to the Welsh Labour conference to defend Rachel Reeves’s Budget, and to insist that he would not be backing down on any of the measures she had announced, despite mounting criticism over the family farm tax and the rise in employer National Insurance contributions.

Farmers besieged the conference in tractors as Sir Keir was speaking. Defending the Prime Minister, Ms Haigh said: “What Keir Starmer laid out to our colleagues at the Welsh conference yesterday was a defence of the Budget.”

She added: “None of us came into power to levy taxes on farmers.”

Noting that she had friends and family in the farming sector, she said: “We do understand concerns, and we appreciate how hard farmers work.” But she insisted that the family farm tax was “fair and proportionate”.

Daniel Zeichner, the farming minister, told BBC Politics East: “I urge people to look calmly at the detail and I think they will find that the vast majority will be fine.

“The figures from the Treasury are very clear: under 500 farms a year are likely to be affected and I would say to people: take advice because every person’s situation is different and there will be many, many people who will find they are not actually going to be caught by this.”

However, Gareth Wyn Jones, a north Wales farmer and a popular YouTuber, accused Sir Keir of “fleeing out of the back door like a flipping rat” after the Prime Minister avoided speaking to farmers or addressing their concerns in his speech.

Adrian Ramsay, the co-leader of the Green Party, said that the Government should rethink its inheritance tax changes.

He told The House magazine: “The Government’s got into a muddle over its figures, and there’s disagreement between different departments about how many farms would actually be caught up by this planned tax.”

“The Government needs to have another look at what it’s got planned and be able to make a clear distinction between people who are speculating in buying up land and actual family farms.”

Meanwhile, Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), claimed that he did not support the idea of withholding produce in protest at the tax.

Mr Bradshaw said: “I don’t for one moment condone that anyone will stop supplying the supermarkets.

“We saw during the Covid crisis that those unable to get their food were often either the most vulnerable, or those that have been working long hours in hospitals [such as] nurses.

“That is something we do not want to see again, but this is in the Government’s control: they can sit down, they can talk to us and work a way through this.”

He continued: “That is not an NFU tactic – we do not support emptying supermarket shelves – but I do completely understand the strength of feeling that there is amongst farmers.

“They feel helpless today, and they’re trying to think of what can they do to try and demonstrate what this means to them. So I understand their strength of feeling, but we are not supporting that action.”

Asked why farmers should be protected from inheritance tax, when passing on assets worth £1 million or more “lies beyond the wildest dreams of most people”, Mr Bradshaw said: “I recognise you may have people watching today that struggle to be able to afford the weekly shop, or the daily shop, and that is a really, really challenging situation.”