Why have British farmers marched on UK’s Parliament?

British farmers say they will be forced to sell farms under inheritance tax reforms.

Thousands of disgruntled British farmers marched on London on Tuesday in protest at government plans to change the law regarding the amount of inheritance tax farmers should pay.

The demonstrations saw tractors driven by farmers and coach loads of other agricultural workers from the United Kingdom’s four nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland descend on Parliament Square, to stage a large-scale protest in bitterly cold temperatures as leaders from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) met with MPs at Westminster.

One protester, Kieron Goodall-Lomax, a sheep farmer from Derbyshire, northern Midlands, told The London Standard weekly that plans to raise revenue by imposing inheritance tax changes on farming assets bore the hallmarks of an out-of-touch Labour Party government which “does not understand the countryside”.

“This is just going to break up family farms and really put a lot of pressure on an industry facing quite a lot of difficulty,” added Goodall-Lomax.

The new Labour-led British government, which won a landslide victory in July’s UK general election, wasted little time in ringing in the changes after 14 years as the country’s official opposition to the previously ruling Conservative Party.