Ordinary (working) people

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?

Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe Chancellor Rachel Reeves has hit on a cunning plan. Or….maybe not.

How do we think that Reeves and her Treasury minions came up with the changes to Inheritance Tax, specifically those relating to farming? Do we think they looked at the amount of land given over to farming (far less than it used to be) in the UK, checked on the price per acre. Then got their Casio calculators out and worked out that farmers must be squirreling away gazillions in untaxed income every time they passed the farm on the next generation.

Did Reeves sit there in 11 Downing Street and think to herself “I’m having myself some of that”? Was Animal Farm one of her GCSE set texts? Did she feel the revolutionary urge to right the capitalist wrongs done by generations of Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, as they rode roughshod over the rights of ordinary working people? Has a Treasury bod long harboured a grudge against the girl whose farmer father dropped her to school in his Range Rover (probably because the farm was too far from the bus stop)?

The Treasury says its calculations – those Casio keys are getting some bashing – demonstrate the changes to IHT will affect ‘very few’ farms, and that this is closing a loophole whereby a number of very rich people bypass the taxes payable by, yes them again, ordinary working people.

I’d like to invite Mrs Reeves – and Sir Kier Starmer who also bangs on about the ordinary working people – down to Sussex to spend a day amongst the ordinary working people on my friend’s farm. By which I mean my friend, her parents, whose farm it is, her 8 year old daughter and three farm workers. 1,000 sheep, 50+ cattle, 180 acres. Getting up at 4 am everyday, then taking daughter to school in a 20 year old Land Rover that’s held together with gaffer tape, string and, mostly, prayer. I know Reeves will say that these are not the farmers that she is targeting, but my magnificent friend – seriously, I have no idea how she does it – is exactly the sort of business that is going to get caught in the crossfire of this ill-thought out policy.

As could a great many businesses in this industry. Farms: multi generational, family-owned, family-run, passed down through the generations. Independent builders merchants: multi-generational, family-owned, family-run, passed down through the generations. See where I’m going with this?

Business Property Relief was designed to ensure that family-owned businesses could make long-term investments, making those businesses financially secure for the longer term, allowing them to stay in family hands, rather than having to be sold off to corporate entities on the death of the main shareholder. It’s a business ethos that is about the bigger picture, about businesses that and grow and develop over time, providing employment and career prospects for – all together now “ordinary working people”. Oh, and also ensuring tax revenue for the Government, and helping the economy to grow.

The £1m cap on business assets that can be transferred before triggering IHT will affect a great many businesses in this sector, as NMBS CEO Chris Hayward and BMF CEO John Newcomb are pointing out.

If you’re on minimum wage, or the average, median salary in the UK (currently £37,950), then £1m might seem an astronomical amount, one which sorts the rich from the “ordinary working people”. It isn’t really. Especially in terms of business that employ said ordinary working people.

Maybe this was all done from a good place, from wanting to fill the black hole at the heart of the UK economy. Well, Mrs Reeves, Astrophysics 101: black holes don’t get filled. Ever. They just consume everything and anything that comes into their orbit until eventually there is nothing left.

You need a different cunning plan, Mrs Reeves. Just saying.