Andy Burnham has been in Downing Street for barely a day, and rural Britain has already presented him with his first invoice. Farmers, landowners and the wider countryside economy are demanding that the new Prime Minister and his surprise Chancellor, John Healey, reverse the inheritance tax changes that have convulsed British agriculture since 2024.
The pressure lands squarely on the new occupant of No 11, a former Treasury minister who now inherits the most contentious tax policy of the Labour era alongside the nation’s chequebook.
The row dates back to Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, when she announced that agricultural property relief (APR) and business property relief (BPR), the mechanisms that allow farms and family firms to pass between generations without a tax bill forcing a sale, would be restricted from April 2026.
After months of tractor protests in Westminster, the government blinked just before Christmas. The threshold for 100 per cent relief was raised from £1 million to £2.5 million per estate, with married couples able to combine allowances to £5 million, and 50 per cent relief above that. According to the House of Commons Library, the Treasury expects the concession to halve the number of affected estates, from 375 to 185 in 2026-27.
For many in the sector that was mitigation, not resolution. The Country Land and Business Association has argued the reforms could affect around 70,000 farms, and a group of farmers took the government to the High Court in March in a judicial review over the lack of formal consultation on the changes.
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