Environment Secretary says he has ‘heard anguish of countryside’ after protests

The UK Government’s Environment Secretary has said he heard the “anguish” of the countryside after thousands of farmers protested against the Budget.

Speaking to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), Steve Reed said he wanted to support farmers, as he announced a 25-year farming road map to help the sector move to more environmentally and financially sustainable models of agriculture.

His comments come after 13,000 farmers and supporters rallied in central London over measures in the Budget including imposing inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million and speeding up the phaseout of EU-era subsidies in favour of nature-friendly farming payments.

Opening the CLA’s rural business conference, the organisation’s president Victoria Vyvyan warned: “Farmers, landowners and businesses in the rural economy are facing a very bleak future, if we have one at all.”

‘Final straw’

Mr Reed told delegates at the conference in central London that farming leaders and individual farmers he spoke to during Tuesday’s protest had told him the Budget was the “final straw” after decades of issues, as he pledged to work with rural communities to support them.

He was challenged in the conference over the issue of elderly farmers thinking the only way through the changes to inheritance tax was to take their lives before the measures came in in April 2026.

In response, he said he wanted to listen to understand how Government could make the changes easier to bear.

But he also warned the country “can’t go on the way that it was” and Budget decisions on tax and spending were made to restore economic stability, and to support public services such as the NHS the elderly relied on.

“The prize is for the long term, and an economy that works for the future, for every single person in every single part of the country, including our rural communities,” he said.

Reforms

In his speech he also reiterated the Government’s insistence that the vast majority of farming families would not be affected by the inheritance tax changes, in the face of analysis by the CLA that 70,000 UK farms could face paying the tax over the coming years.

“The truth is hard data, independently verified, shows that the vast majority of claimants will still pay nothing, but the reforms will raise money that will help fix the public services that rural and farming communities rely on just as much as anyone else in the country,” he said.

He said he was “struck” by how many people described the Budget issues that brought them out onto the streets of London on Tuesday as “the final straw”.

“Those straws have been piling up for many decades now, they are the frustrations of rural communities across Britain who feel misunderstood, neglected and frankly disrespected.

“This isn’t just about tax or even just about farming, important though those things are, it is about a whole community demanding to be treated with respect.”

And he said: “I heard the anguish of the countryside on the streets of London earlier this week.

“We may not agree over the inheritance tax changes, but this Government is determined to listen to rural Britain and end its long decline.

“We are investing £5 billion in sustainable food production to benefit farming, rebuilding our shattered public services that rural communities rely on, fixing the foundations of our broken rural economies so they can grow again sustainably for decades into the future,” he insisted.

Mr Reed announced a farmer-led 25-year farming road map, which he said would be the “most forward-looking plan for farming in our country’s history, with a focus on making farming and food production more profitable in the decades to come”.

He said it would not tell farmers what to do, but would be farmer-led so they can tell Government what they need to make a success of the transition to environmentally and financially sustainable farming.