He said: 鈥淗owever high feelings are running in the farming community, today's actions by a group which deliberately disrupted a major speech by the Prime Minister were misjudged and, clearly, have been massively counter-productive.
鈥淭his was not an NFU event. Since last October, the NFU has been leading a campaign to mitigate the damaging and inhumane impacts of the proposed changes to inheritance tax on farms, building independent evidence, huge public support and political backing across Parliament.聽
鈥淲hilst we understand, and share, the Prime Minister's frustrations today, he is not right to say that Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) are 鈥渁 tax break for farmers鈥�. He knows they are policies designed to ensure family farms can stay in business聽and enable them to deliver for the nation. It's also not reasonable to suggest that raising between nothing and 拢500 million 鈥� the varying estimates of what the new tax will bring in 鈥� will determine the future of the NHS or UK schools.聽
鈥溁始一薶as spent months trying to meet the Chancellor,聽more recently聽to share and discuss what we believe is a revenue neutral change to the family farm tax which helps the government in its aim of raising money, but also protects family farms聽and removes the elderly from the eye of this storm. We have meetings with the Exchequer Secretary next week where we hope that, despite today's events, he will welcome and consider聽these proposals聽properly.聽
鈥淓vents like today's are not the way to achieve policy change. 皇家华人represents 44,000 farming businesses in England and Wales and we will speak with their voices next week 鈥� calmly and constructively.鈥�