Armstrong: Farmers squeezed from both ends as UFU survey lays bare inheritance tax damage
UUP deputy leader Diana Armstrong has backed calls for inheritance tax changes to be reversed in the Autumn Budget, after a UFU survey found more than 40% of farm businesses had cut investment.
Ulster Unionist Party deputy leader and agriculture spokesperson, Diana Armstrong, has backed the Ulster Farmers’ Union’s call for inheritance tax changes to be reversed in the Autumn Budget, after a survey of members found more than four in 10 farm businesses have already cut back on investment.
The MLA said: “This is hard reading, and none of it will surprise anyone who has been round farms these past two years.
“Nearly nine in 10 report increased stress or worry. Seven in ten have lost confidence that the farm can be handed on as a going concern. Almost a quarter are looking at a potential bill of £250,000 or more.
“Those are not statistics to the people who filled that survey in. That is a conversation at a kitchen table about land their grandfather worked, and whether any of it survives them.
“The figure that stopped me was this one. More than four in ten have already cut back, put off or cancelled investment in the farm. Not at some point down the line when a bill arrives. Now.
“Set that against what is happening here at home. Farmers are being told to modernise. Invest in slurry storage. Improve your environmental performance. Take on new technology. Then look at what this Department actually offered in farm capital investment in 2025. Not one pound.
“Support has come at the eleventh hour, after a year in which farmers were asked to transform their businesses with nothing to transform them with, and it still does nothing for the bigger investments like slurry storage and buildings.
“So there is precious little coming from Stormont to invest with, and a tax change at Westminster is pushing people to stop investing anyway. Squeezed from both ends.
“The next generation is where this does the real damage. Almost half say the young person who was meant to take over is now less willing or less able to do it.
“This is also bigger than farming. The family farm is what a rural community is built on. It is the children filling the school bus, the team on a Saturday, the trade going through the local shop, the neighbour who turns up at silage or when somebody takes ill. Lose those farms and you do not just lose food production. You lose the place.
“There is a chance to put this right. These changes were made by the last Government. This Chancellor can undo them, and should. My colleague Robin Swann MP has pressed this at Westminster from the start and will keep at it.
“To any farming family feeling the weight of it, you are not on your own. Rural Support is there on 0800 138 1678.”