A farming family said they’re ditching the UK for France. (Image: Getty)
A farming family is ditching the UK for France as Labour’s impending inheritance tax (IHT) reforms push them away. Jo Franklin has been farming most of her life in Hertfordshire and set up a sheep dairy business with her husband Rob 13 years ago, which she says now “isn’t viable anymore”. She told The Times: “We’re passionate about what we do and very good at it. But since the new Government came in, we’ve realised our business isn’t viable any more.
“So we’ve decided to sell our farm in England, move our family to France and start again as farmers there. We feel we have no choice.” The family own a five-bedroom farmhouse near Ware, and a 64-acre smallholding where they run their sheep dairy business, with 300 milking ewes.
Limousin in France is known for its beef farming. (Image: Getty)
It comes as Daily Express Save Britain’s Family Farms continues to campaign against brutal inheritance tax changes that threaten to put farmers out of business. The crusade has shown how farming families will be ruined by the proposed policy of applying a 20% inheritance tax on farms worth more than £ 1 million.
This measure will make it financially punishing – if not impossible – for farmers to pass on land to their sons and daughters.
The Government is adamant that three-quarters of farmers will pay nothing. But campaigners robustly contest these figures, believing the real figure will worsen over time.
The family run a sheep dairy business. (Image: Getty)
The Franklins are also tenant farmers across another 1,800 acres, which are home to 2,000 commercial sheep for meat, and do arable farming.
Jo said their attitudes began to change once the Labour Government came into power last year, which she said exacerbated the “race to the bottom”.
She said: “But when this government came in, we sensed the future was not going to be good. Things were already difficult. Since the Second World War, food production has been subsidised by the government.
“And they’ve continued to do it, to keep food cheap and voters happy. The supermarkets have so much power, while farmers have none – and it’s a race to the bottom in terms of quality.”
The Franklin family are now moving to the picturesque French region of Limousin, known for its beef farming and distinctive cattle.
Jo said France wasn’t previously an attractive option as IHT is high, but after Labour’s reforms kick in, it “will be about the same”.
She added: “The difference is, we will be able to run a profitable enough business in France to put cash aside for the children to be able to pay inheritance tax.
“What appeals about France is, the land is cheaper and the country is invested in food. Consumers care about what they eat.”
‘Post apocalypse UK must be vegan friendly’, government ministers warned
Experts have warned the UK’s food supply is vulnerable to attack (Image: Getty)
Vegans must not be forgotten in a possible food apocalypse, an expert has warned. Professor Tim Lang, an expert in food policy, warned Britain is significantly underprepared for “shocks” to its food supply chain and risks not being ready to cater for vegans and Muslims.
Lang said if a cyberattack or Russian assault, for example, disrupted the country’s “vulnerable” food chain, ration packs would need to be familiar to those receiving them. The professor, who works at the Centre for Food Policy at City, St George’s, University of London, added that if people were “in psychological shock, they need to have things they are familiar with and comfortable with”.
In an apocalyptic scenario, Lang said the population would “have just experienced new things — explosions, energy outages — and you don’t want people used to a halal diet to have to eat a non-halal diet for example or vegetarians and vegans to have to eat meat.”
It will be very different from 1940 and 1916 and we have not been planning for that,” he told the Hay Festival.
Supermarkets, including the Co-op and Marks & Spencer, have recently been hit by cyber attacks that interrupted supply chains. Lang said disruption would have been far more significant if a similar attack had successfully targeted Tesco, which “sells nearly a third of all food.”
He continued: ““When I have looked at how much intelligence gathering is going on in the food system about shocks it is low. Not much. But there are a range of potential shocks to the food industry … but there is this complacency. We just tend to assume food is there.”
Figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show that the amount of food consumed in Britain that is grown in the country fell to 62% in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
This compares with a peak of 78% back in 1984.
A report authored by Professor Lang and published this year by the National Preparedness Commission found that “civil food resilience”, a concept meaning the public’s awareness of the risks to food supplies, ability to reduce unnecessary risks and preparedness to act to ensure society is well fed in a crisis, was “not currently adequately seriously by the UK”.
Lang said: “We’re not even self-sufficient in potatoes. We’re importing them from Egypt, for God’s sake, which is drought-stressed. Look at where we get so much of our veg: Murcia, in southeast Spain. It is water-stressed. It is bonkers.”
