BBC Question Time viewers member slams inheritance tax moan – ‘smallest violin’

A BBC Question Time audience member has said he will have to find the “world’s smallest violin” as he slammed farmers moaning about inheritance tax changes.

A man weighed in on a debate about measures included in the Budget to impose inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1million. Around 13,000 farmers and supporters rallied in central London this week to protest the changes. Jeremy Clarkson, who was at the march, clashed with reporters after he was asked about previously saying that avoiding inheritance tax was the “critical thing” in buying his 1,000 acre Diddly Squat farm near Chipping Norton.

Speaking on Thursday evening, the audience member told the panel of political figures: “I keep hearing this term cash-poor and asset-rich and my maths isn’t great but for £400,000 worth of inheritance tax and you have a £5million estate, I’m afraid you are gonna have to find me the world’s smallest violin to tell me that you don’t pay tax on an estate that you’re passing down to your children of £5million. It sounds crazy to me.”

Tory MP and shadow business minister Harriet Baldwin said she has seen farmers “who were in floods of tears for their their family livelihoods”. She said: “All of the family farmers who want to pass onto the next generation do something very, very precious for us, and that is that they provide food security to the UK.”

She referenced a Clement Attlee phrase from after WWI, where we ran into food security issues, and how he vowed that the UK should never find itself in that position again. “So that, I think, is what makes this different from the ordinary family who is caught in an inheritance trap situation,” she continued.

“These are people who put food on our table, who provide the milk in our supermarkets, who are the people who, who feed us, and so therefore, to take away a fifth of their farm every time it changes generation, you can see how, over the long term, that is going to erode their ability, not only to pass down the land, but really importantly, to pass down those traditions of dairy farming, those traditions of arable farming.”

The Government says around 500 claims a year are expected to be affected – but this is hotly disputed by the farmers’ union, who say it will be considerably more. On Friday Keir Starmer said the Government is “for farmers”, as he reiterated his position that the majority of farms will not be affected by agricultural inheritance tax changes.

The PM said the vast majority of farms will be “completely unaffected” by changes to agricultural inheritance tax, but added to BBC Radio Lincolnshire: “I do understand their concerns”.

He continued: “Firstly, in the Budget, we allocated £5billion over the next two years to farming, that’s the single biggest amount of money into sustainable food production, that’s hugely important for farmers, plus money for dealing with flooding, which is always a problem, and the outbreak of disease.

“For the inheritance tax, obviously, what farmers want to do, understandably, is make sure that the family farm is preserved. In a typical case, which is, you know, parents passing, initially to each other, to the other spouse, when one dies, and then on to a child, so that’s a typical case, the threshold before inheritance tax is paid is £3 million… There aren’t many farms year on year, that are sold in excess of that amount, and therefore that threshold is high. Vast majority of farmer s won’t be affected.”

Asked on BBC Radio Bristol about the £3million threshold figure, and put to him that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves had said the threshold was £1million, he said: “Well, there is an allowance for the farm land itself, which is £1 million. There’s then an allowance spouse-to-spouse on death, and then there’s an allowance final, you know, surviving parent to child. When you add all those up, all three of those, are very likely to be the case for a family farm.”

He added: “When you add those three together. So that’s your classic, typical family farm, it’s £3 million threshold.”