Jeremy Clarkson was involved in a tense exchange with a BBC journalist at a large protest by farmers angry at the government’s inheritance tax proposals.
The former Top Gear host clashed with BBC Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire in central London on Tuesday about the controversial plans.
More than 10,000 people attended a rally in Whitehall to demand that chancellor Rachel Reeves scrap her budget pledge to make farms worth more than £1m pay inheritance tax at a rate of 20%, starting from 2026.
Farmer protest live: Jeremy Clarkson begs Labour to ‘back down’ on inheritance tax
Among those protesting was Clarkson, 64, whose Amazon Prime TV show Clarkson’s Farm has documented his own foray into the sector. In an interview with The Times in 2021, Clarkson said avoiding the tax was a “critical” factor in his decision to buy the land in Oxfordshire.
Before he addressed thousands of farmers gathered in London, he was interviewed by Derbyshire, who started by asking him why he was there.
“I’m here to support farmers,” he replied. When he said he was “not angry” on behalf of farmers, Derbyshire asked: “So it’s not about you? It’s not about your farm and the fact that you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?”
“So it’s not about you, it’s not about your farm and the fact you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?”@vicderbyshire speaks to Jeremy Clarkson at the farmers’ protest in Westminster where thousands of farmers are protesting the government’s inheritance tax plans. pic.twitter.com/9KwoiEbImz
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 19, 2024
Clarkson responded: “Classic BBC there. Classic. I wanted to shoot. That’s even worse to the BBC. I wanted to shoot, which comes with the benefit of not having to pay inheritance tax. Now I do.”
Referencing the rule which states inheritance tax is not paid on certain gifts given seven years before an individual dies, Clarkson continued: “People like me will simply put it in a trust and, as long as I live for seven years, that’s fine.
“But it’s incredibly time-consuming to have to do that. And why should all these people have to do that? Why should they?”
Derbyshire said Reeves had introduced the proposal to help fund public services and asked Clarkson: “Have you tried to get a GP appointment lately?”
He replied: “Yes, I just recently had a heart attack.”
When she asked him where he thought the government should get the money from if not from farmers with assets, he turned to the crowd watching the interview and shouted: “From farmers! Did you hear that everyone? The BBC thinks you should be paying for everything.”
Clarkson then accused Reeves of getting her figures on how many farmers her policy would affect “from the middle of her head” and asked the government to “please back down”.
When Derbyshire continued to press where the money should come from to improve public services, Clarkson hinted that the civil service should make cuts, saying: “I tell you where. Walk into any of the offices round here, if you don’t understand what somebody’s job is, fire them.”
Later, when on stage addressing the crowd, Clarkson said: “I’ve just been interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire from BBC Newsnight. Let’s see if we can educate her here, if you’re still around, Victoria.
“How many people here if you’d raise your hands are from a family farm? That’s a lot of hands. I want you to lower them if you think you’re going to be unaffected by the changes to APR [Agricultural Property Relief] and BPR [Business Property Relief]?”
With thousands of hands remaining raised, Clarkson said: “Thank you, my case rests. I want Newsnight to see that. She was trotting out, ‘Nobody’s affected, Rachel Reeves says so’. Since when was the BBC the mouthpiece of this infernal government?”
How many farmers will be affected?
Farmers say thousands of them will feel the impact of the inheritance tax changes, the chancellor says the numbers are only in the hundreds – so who is right?
The treasury says 27% of estates claiming agricultural property relief (APR) were above the £1m threshold in the year 2021/22, suggesting nearly three-quarters of farms would not be affected.
It said 500 estates a year are expected to pay inheritance tax under the changes.
Dan Neidle, founder of the independent Tax Policy Associates, went further, saying as few as 100 farms per year could be affected. He said this is because, for the entire population, no inheritance tax is paid on the value of property up to £325,000, taking the untaxed total to £1.325m. And because married couples could claim the tax-free cap twice, this could take the untaxed amount to £2.65m. According to HMRC, there were 117 farms valued at more than £2.5m in 2021/22.
And Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, told Sky News the proposals “will affect a remarkably small number of some of the most valuable farms”.
However, the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) say that as many as 70,000 farms could be affected, a figure that has been backed by the Liberal Democrats and appears to have been calculated from Defra’s Farm Business Survey, which suggested between 30% and 35% of the 209,000 farms in the UK could be valued at more than £1m.
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) says the plan to combine APR with business property relief (BPR), which covers things such as grain and machinery, with a single allowance of £1m before inheritance tax, means more farms will be affected.
It said elderly farmers are in the “cruellest predicament” as they may not live for another seven years to take advantage of exemptions for gifting assets.
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