The Budget is an opportunity for John Healey to scrap the family farm tax - Victoria Atkins

The Conservatives will scrap the changes to inheritance tax for farmers and rural businesses, the Shadow Environment Secretary writes.

Labour has been waging a sustained assault on the countryside ever since the General Election in 2024 and the introduction of the family farm and family business taxes soon after.

Tens of thousands of people have come to Westminster to protest these taxes, which threaten farms and businesses that have been passed down through generations.

Conservatives have been clear that we will always stand up for rural communities and for farming families.

We have led the campaign against these vindictive taxes, highlighted the mistakes in Labour’s calculations, and raised the devastating impact on affected families.

We have also forced the issue onto the floor of the House of Commons eight times – with the Government voting us down on every single occasion.

Sir Keir Starmer may have made a partial U-turn in December last year, sneaking it out the day before Christmas Eve.

But we know that it had already had a devastating impact before that announcement and the policy, even with a higher threshold, is still having a hugely negative effect on farmers.

Many farming families have had serious and sobering conversations around the kitchen table, discussing how to protect their livelihoods, their family homes, and their children and grandchildren’s futures.

With higher energy costs, the jobs tax, the fertiliser tax, ever-expanding red tape, and the farming payments fiasco, it’s no wonder that this Government has presided over record farm closures.

In a challenging world, we need food security. We need our farmers to be focused on growing food, we need regulation to go with the grain of rural life and not against it, and we need farmers to have the certainty to invest for the future.

With the Budget just days away, there is now an opportunity for the new Prime Minister and new Chancellor to do the right thing, scrap these taxes and apologise for the damage Labour has caused to family farms and family businesses across Yorkshire and the country.

If they don’t, the Conservatives pledge to repeal them when we return to government.

Victoria Atkins is the Shadow Environment Secretary.