Robin Milton

Latest farm income figures; Natural England admits environmental payments aren’t delivering for farmers; & Nigel Farage targets farming vote. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this week’s Farmers Weekly Podcast - and to you for listening 👍🎧 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…

@afneil 'further and faster' but in what direction?

Update on that Starmer-Reeves growth project: Growth in November 2025: 0.2% Growth in December 2025: 0.1% Growth in January 2026: 0.0%

This from @Geoffrey_Cox was titanic - a truly beautiful speech. He outshone those sat opposite. They could only watch. And nervously laugh. This should be seen by every new MP to understand what they do, & every new barrister to understand what we do.

Even the BBC is being forced to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of Net Zero. Oxford University economist explains why the UK has the most expensive industrial electricity prices in the developed world, and why that's so disastrous for the UK economy. "With the drive towards renewables... we need twice the amount of capacity... twice the grid, and we need all the batteries and storage as well." "If our industrial costs are four times higher than the United States... you're going to go to the United States and not here." "We have to crack that problem. Otherwise, we're going to buy... all the stuff we're buying from countries like China. They're using coal. China burns half the world's coal." "We don't solve our problems by simply closing down British industries."

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@FarmersGuardian Government still don’t get it - they have effectively, even with the changes, taxed food production missing the opportunity to better target taxation of corporate, commercial and lifestyle investors using land for taxation management- consumers will pay

FARMERS PROTEST IN OXFORD 🚨🪧 Tractors have arrived outside the Oxford Farming Conference in an attempt to force Labour ministers to rethink the family farm tax. 🗣️ Despite the horns, Defra Secretary Emma Reynolds said: "We have listened to farmers and we have changed. Around 85% of estates will pay no more IHT. - - - #familyfarmtax #oxfordfarmingconference #farming

Britain now has 603 government departments, agencies and public bodies and 550,000 civil servants. On a per capita basis we have more civil servants than Communist China does. In 1900 at the height of the Empire Britain only had 50,000 civil servants.

@JohnSlinger Only one(1) labour MP exhibited real principles- Marcus Campbell Savours- and stood by his beliefs and promises to his constituents- the rest are now mere bystanders

Farmers across Rugby, Bulkington and the Villages have raised concerns about inheritance tax relief. I've engaged with the farming community locally and at Westminster. Today's announcement represents significant changes to protect family farms. 🧵

The increase in APR/BPR allowance are welcome, but they do not take everyone to safety. There are many people who will still need good advice, and urgently. They include: - Unmarried/divorced people with farms/businesses worth over £2.5m and other assets above £325k. - Married couples or widows/widowers with farms/businesses worth over £5m and other assets above £650k. - People in second marriages who want the farm to go down the family line. - People looking at putting businesses or shares into trust For some, the planning you have already done may need to be adapted or altered. There is some time to do this, but not much. Many people will be out of the office until 5th January, and very busy thereafter. Contact your advisors now, recognising that thousands of people like you need their help and they will be struggling with workloads.

@CommonsEFRA @amcarmichaelMP Huge thanks are due to Alistair for his stance on this and in particular his incredibly robust questioning of Keir Starmer recently - the policy is now only partly wrong rather than totally wrong and huge damage has been done in the interim

The Government has announced changes to Agricultural and Business Property Relief reforms (APR and BPR), set to be introduced in 2026. We’ve consistently pressed the Government to rethink these reforms and welcome the changes. Chair @amcarmichaelMP shares his view 👇

Massive Government U-turn on inheritance tax, increasing the APR/BPR allowances from April 2026 to £2.5m per person from £1m per person. I am so relieved - I know many people for whom this will change their lives and allow their children to continue the family business rather that seeing it collapse. Huge thanks go to everyone involved in lobbying, especially the NFU, CLA, TFA, and the dozens of individually freely giving their time to see a change. Also to the Conservatives and other opposition parties for being steadfast and committed. However I do recall sitting in a key decision-maker's office, discussing that this sort of proposal might happen and we would all be expected to be grateful for an utterly stupid proposal finally being pared back to one that is merely economically unwise. This is where we are now. The changes to APR/BPR should be scrapped in their entirety, not tweaked because everyone realised that Keir Starmer looked brutal and uncaring when the consequences of his proposals were explained to him. The changes to APR & BPR were unwarranted and inane from the first moment they were announced. The Treasury has put thousands of people through 14 months of hell for nothing but ideology, and they should suffer the political consequences of that. Inheritance tax reliefs threshold to rise to £2.5m for farmers and businesses - GOV.UK

@_RobbieMoore Thank you Robbie for all your work on this. There's still more to do but it's a huge step forwards.

@CLAtweets A real ‘consultation’ or another in name only? Increasingly feeling that the outcomes will be the same regardless of the responses

Planning opportunity for rural landowners - government launches consultation on National Planning Policy Framework following CLA #RuralPowerhouse campaign. 🏡 Learn how the new framework will impact #housing, #heritage, #BNG and other rural developments: cla.org.uk/news/planning-…

Fun fact: If every cow in Britain disappeared tomorrow, global emissions would drop by approximately 0.3%. Know what would have bigger impact? - Banning private jets: 2-3% reduction - Stopping fast fashion shipping: 8-10% reduction But attacking British farmers is easier than telling billionaires to fly commercial.

I welcome Baroness Batters' review of farming profitability. There are some very clear messages at the head of the report, and a lot of great work has been done in the UK and other jurisdictions. The conclusions and direction of the team's insights and conclusions are important. However I am worried however that the constraints placed upon the report by DEFRA before it ever got started have meant that the recommendations struggle to avoid the glaringly obvious point of inheritance tax, which in itself presents the greatest existential threat to British agriculture. It is challenging to talk about measures to promote investment in farming when the farmers know that the Government will capture 20% of any uplifted value in inheritance tax on their death. In addition, all recommendations had to be consistent with the Climate Change Act and similar measures, again preventing an assessment of whether there is any cost benefit analysis here. Similarly, while there is a nod towards diversifying farm activities, there is nothing on shoring up reliefs for farms with, say, a combination of commercial or residential lettings alongside their farming work. Over-diversifying can still strip you of all business property relief and with agriculture not being particularly profitable this presents a key problem for the future. The resistance by Government to considering second-level behavioural impacts of their policies is more than frustrating. I am not confident that establishing a new FARM body will particularly drive profitability but others will know much more in this area than I do. The real issues that would boost profitability would appear to me to be increasing prices on the shelf (which clearly is unattractive), decreasing profitability of supermarkets (again, they wouldn't be happy about this) and decreasing the amount of value stripped out of the industry in taxation. I'm not sure I see too much of these in the review?

So let’s get this straight… The government commission a review on the biggest barriers to farm profitability. They release it at the eleventh hour, after their damaging budget measures have already been locked in. And they explicitly prevent the author of the review from making any recommendations on the Family Farm Tax... which the report itself then goes on to identify as the “the single biggest issue regarding farming viability’ that farmers face.

I sit on rural stakeholder groups in Cumbria listening to leaders and academics talk on the effects of climate change and the need for more nature and net zero Yet none of them place food in the same at risk category and many are encouraging the repurposing farm land. Why?

Would this be a good time to remind everyone that our own goverment has a ‘food strategy advisory board’ staffed with Ultra Processed Food interests? This is what AI says about its membership… And there are NO ‘farmers’ represented on the board

Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table, At which he's fed. Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes are the rule. Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts anyway! Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt. Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he Tries to think. Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries Tax his tears. Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find any way To tax his ass! Tax him all he has, then let him know That you won't be done Till he has no dough. When he screams and when he hollers; Then tax him more, take all his dollars Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in Which he's laid... Put these words Upon his tomb: ‘Taxes drove me to my doom...' When he's gone, Do not relax, It's time to apply Inheritance Tax! #BudgetDay