Unassuming wooden crates filled with brake pads and metal springs are piled high in the loading bay of the Broadbent factory close to Huddersfield city centre. Shipping them out to Nigeria and Ghana remains the day job for Simon Broadbent, but the manufacturer’s owner has a growing issue nagging at him – the fate of his 160-year-old business in the face of Labour’s tax overhaul.
Broadbent has emerged as a reluctant challenger to plans by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to strip family firms of the ability to pass on their businesses tax free from next April. Campaigners, including the manufacturers association Make UK, say the tax overhaul threatens the backbone of the British industrial sector.
