Reeves's tax on farmers funds the fight against shoplifting, suggests minister

Telegraph

7 hours ago

Rachel Reeves's tax raid on farmers will fund the fight against shoplifting, a minister has suggested.
Torsten Bell said the Chancellor's changes to inheritance tax will enable more police on the streets, meaning fewer shops needing to pay for their security.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Bell, a Treasury and pensions minister, said: 'If you go back to the autumn Budget last year, which is when the big decisions this Government made were taken, yes, there were some tough decisions on tax.
'I understand why people affected by those would rather they hadn't taken place. But if you look at the decisions we've had to make on inheritance tax, or capital gains tax, or on non-doms or on VAT on private schools, we're doing the right thing to make sure that we can have sustainable public finances.
'But also that we can bring austerity to an end, so we can start to rebuild public services. And in the end, that is the pro-business choice just like it's the pro-public services choice.
'Because we can't have retail businesses having to deal with paying to put security guards on their door because there aren't enough police on the beat. We can't have people having to pay a health charge in effect because their workers aren't able to turn up to work because waiting lists are too long in the NHS.'
Mr Bell's remarks are likely to fuel the backlash to how the Government has approached both its changes to agricultural property relief and the shoplifting crisis.
The shoplifting epidemic is at record levels with nearly three offences a minute – or 530,643 in total – reported to police in the year to March, at an estimated cost of £1.8bn to retailers.
Last week, Dame Diana Johnson, the policing minister, warned business owners against displaying products such as bottles of alcohol at the front of stores because people will steal them.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman then said Sir Keir Starmer would not call shoplifters 'scumbags' in response to a free speech row.
North Wales Police was forced to clarify its position after its officers told a shopkeeper that a sign calling shoplifters 'scumbags' could be offensive.
Farms close after tax
A record number of farms have already closed for good this year after the Government's so-called 'family farm tax' made the future of thousands of rural businesses unviable.
Currently, family farms do not incur inheritance tax and receive full relief on the usual 40 per cent rate.
But at her first Budget last October, Ms Reeves confirmed inheritance tax will be charged at a rate of 20 per cent, above a threshold of £1m.
A total of 6,365 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses closed in the past year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the highest number on record.
Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, said the farm closures were a result of 'Labour's disastrous tax policies'.
Reform UK, meanwhile, warned that Ms Reeves's policy and wider £40bn tax raid was 'pushing British farming to the brink'.
Farmers have objected to the tax raid because their businesses are typically cash-poor and low-margin, meaning they will be forced to sell chunks of their land to settle the bill.
Other farmers have warned that the impending increase in their costs has opened a 'suicide window' for elderly business owners.
Shortly after Ms Reeves's announcement in November, Jeremy Clarkson led a protest that saw him address a crowd of around 10,000 people in Westminster.
The former Top Gear host runs the Oxfordshire Diddly Squat farm and is the star of the Clarkson's Farm reality television show, which chronicles the challenges faced by the agricultural industry.
Farmers are also struggling with the soaring cost of fertiliser and a poor harvest after the recent drought and floods last year.
Heatwaves across parts of the country have left growers fearing a record-low yield for their crop and vegetable harvest.
The hot weather came on top of the pressures of increased employers' National Insurance contributions and the raising of the minimum wage.
The British Growers Association said this week that the current summer was 'proving to be yet another climatic challenge for growers', with some regions especially badly-hit.