‘Nail in the coffin’: family farmers respond to inheritance tax changes

Andrew Brown says the rules will stop wealthy people avoiding tax but will harm small farmers. Photograph: Paul Tonge/Guardian Community

For more than 100 years, the family of 56-year-old Andrew Smith has had a cattle farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Smith, who now runs the farm, sees chancellor Rachel Reeves’s changes to inheritance tax rules as a grave betrayal of British farmers.

Working with his three sons, the farm produces about 2,000 sheep and 30 to 40 cows each year, yet makes “no profit”, he says. “We just pay the bills.”