National Farmers Union Day of Unity in Telford

National Farmers Union Day of Unity in Lawley, Telford at Morrisons.

Transcript

00:00Edward Garrett, I'm County Advisor for the National Farmers Union and I also run a small farm in Telford.

00:05So we're at Morrison's in Lawley in Telford, we're here to talk about what we do in the county, for the county,

00:12the produce that we grow in the county, and we're also here to talk about the tax that the government is trying to impose on us.

00:18Okay, it's not about us not wanting to pay tax, all farms pay an awful lot of tax.

00:24This is about a badly thought out method to come in that will only destroy businesses.

00:31So when somebody dies, most farms don't have enough money to pay this tax, so they'll have to sell off parts of their business.

00:38So the business becomes not viable, which means they'll pay less tax.

00:41So it's just not been thought through. The Office of Budget Responsibility now agree with us,

00:46so we're hoping that the government will listen and they realise what they've thought through is not going to work

00:52and will actually not achieve what they wanted.

00:55We are a very tight-knit industry. In the county of Shropshire we've got 10,000 people that work directly involved in the county

01:02and that's not involving the people that sell tractors, that is directly involved with farming.

01:06And we're so proud of what we do, the produce we work, we produce, the jobs we give, the environmental work.

01:15People forget, we look after three and a half thousand miles of footpaths in the county.

01:20We look after 10,000 hectares of trees in the county. No one else does that, that's what we do.

01:26And we're proud of this and we just feel that we're being totally let down by the government

01:30with this inheritance tax proposal, which will only mean businesses have to be broken up.