Tax change in Budget so controversial 125,000 have signed petition against it

Farmers have reacted with fury to inheritance tax changes - and a petition has hit 125k signatures in just TWO days. It comes as the Labour Party government has doubled down on its tax raid on farmers sparking fierce criticism and a petition calling for its reversal reaching 125,000 signatures.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Environment Secretary Steve Reed defended their raid. Yorkshire pig farmer Anna Longthorp voiced her concerns for future generations in farming, warning that it will "no longer be a viable business" in years to come.

Longthorp explained: "I'm just really concerned for the next generation now. The simple fact is that farmers need land to produce food. We need to invest heavily in kit and we need to be able to spread that overhead over a certain amount of land.

READ MORE UK set to be hammered by 5cm of snow with two parts of England 'bearing brunt'

"Once you reduce the size of land that you have, it's just not a viable business anymore. So we're just really concerned about the next generation and basically just leaving them in debt and not being able to farm."

Longthorp stressed that farmers are "not in control" of profits and losses, and it is "not their fault" that land is ever-increasing in value. Longthorp told GB News: "Land is an asset, and has increased exponentially in value over the last half of many years. It's not the farmers fault that land has increased in value.

"Farmers are quite unique in their businesses in that they don't dictate the price that they receive for their products, the supply chain dictates what price they're going to receive. Sometimes that might be above cost of production, a lot of the time it's below the cost of production. So farmers aren't in control over whether they're making a profit or a loss.

Longthorp added: "We hope over time that the profits outweigh the losses, but it's a long game, so what this means is that farmers are essentially asset rich but very cash poor."