-a new Police Performance Unit to track national data on local performance and drive up standards
-a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee to get policing back to basics and rebuild trust between local forces and the communities they serve
-a new National Centre of Policing to harness new technology and forensics, making sure policing is better equipped to meet the changing nature of crime
The text of Cooper’s speech is here.
11.35am) – and Just Stop Oil. In a column two years ago Clarkson referred to them as “eco-herberts” and “halfwits”. Today they joined him at the NFU rally.
Today, Just Stop Oil Supporters joined the Farmers’ March in solidarity with agricultural workers demanding a future.
Farmers are being failed by government policies, cheap imports and supermarket greed, while the climate crisis threatens to destroy food production entirely.
If we want a future worth inheriting, we must end fossil fuel extraction by 2030.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the group said farming was facing a crisis that went beyond inheritance tax.
Food production, the rural and urban economies, our health, education and transport systems have been designed for a climate that no longer exists. There is no evidence that farming can survive the 2C of heating that is now predicted for the 2030’s. That’s everyone’s inheritance down the pan. That’s why there are 24 people in prison who stood up to demand a decent future for all of us.
Just Stop Oil recognises that UK farmers are going to be on the sharp end as we enter this era of consequences. Farmers and farming cannot adapt to a future in which the weather will be either too hot, too dry, too wet or too cold to grow food. The crisis in farming is about so much more than inheritance tax, it’s about political elites betraying ordinary people.
12.20pm and 2.39pm.)
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem MP who chairs the committee, put it to Reed that most of the farmers who turned up at the rally today think they will be affected. He asked: “Are they wrong?”
Reed replied:
Assuming these projections from HMRC, validated by the OBR and the IFS are correct, then many of them, probably happily, are wrong.
He said that there were things that people can do to manage their tax affairs to reduce or avoid an inheritance tax liability. Farmers who thought they would be affected by the tax should get “adequate advice”, he said.
He said that he accepted figures that were being bandied around about how many farmers would be affected were “very, very frightening”. But he said it was wrong just to look at figures showing the value of farms and then “draw a straight line to an inheritance tax liability”. He went on:
You can’t do that because ownership is much more complex than one person, one farm, and when you take into account these other factors, as the Treasury has done, as the OBR has done, as the IFS have done, they all say that less than 500 [estates] would be affected a year.
UPDATE: Asked what farmers should do if they thought they might be liable for inheritance tax under the new rules, Reed replied:
I am not going to give tax advice, the circumstances change from individual to individual. There are many options available.
12.20pm. He has posted this on Bluesky.
It’s not a claim – it’s a fact. We can see from actual inheritance tax claims the numbers who would previously have been affected. Trying to distract from that by pointing to data on something else (farm values NOT who owns/passes on what) makes sense for lobbyists but is nonsense
comments from Wes Streeting that have been seen as a breach of the instruction that cabinet ministers should not be trying to sway the debate in parliament, Starmer said:
I don’t think pressure should be put on MPs … I think we need to stay neutral.
Asked if Streeting went to far, Starmer said he would not talk about individual ministers. Asked if he had spoken to Streeting about this issue, he said he spoke to “all of the cabinet all of the time, as you would expect”.
Starmer took a similar line in an interview with ITV. In both interviews his comments sounded like an implied rebuke to Streeting – albeit not a particularly strong one.
In another interview, Starmer said he had set out his views on this previously (he voted in favour of assisted dying in 2015 and he has said more recently he is still in favour, subject to proper safeguards) and he said people would see how he voted in the debate on Friday week.
Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.
But, when asked about this in an interview at the G20, Starmer sidestepped the question. He said:
My position has always been that Ukraine must have what it needs for as long as it needs. [Vladimir] Putin must not win this war. But look, forgive me, I’m not going to go into operational matters, because there’s only one winner if I do that, and that is Putin and it would undermine Ukrainian efforts.
polling suggesting the unpopularity of UK government policies is harming Scottish Labour’s vote. At the general election Scottish Labour was well ahead of the SNP, but now that lead has collapsed.
Sarwar said he had been “clear from the outset” that he thought Reeve’s pension credit threshold was too low and that he planned to reintroduce a universal payment for all pensioners, but tapered like child benefit is so that wealthier people receive less.
Winter fuel payment was set to be devolved to Scotland this year but, after Reeves’ announcement, the Scottish government said it had no option but to delay as it created a shortfall of £150m.
Sarwar denied that he was trying to distance himself from UK Labour policy, saying:
This is about recognizing that we have got to find a Scottish solution to this problem.
I’ve always been clear that we will take a different approach where I think it’s appropriate.
In Scotland, we took a different approach, for example, on how we supported our trade union movement on picket lines. We obviously took a much earlier and strong view on the conflict in the Middle East, a position supported now by our colleagues across the UK, and we have a different view around the threshold for this payment.
Jeremy Clarkson on his farm and who both star alongside him in Amazon Prime’s Clarkson’s Farm, have also been attending the rally. Cooper is the farm manager, and Ireland is the land agent. Both of them are competent professionals who have to manage Clarkson’s chaotic uselessness (or at least that is the way they all present on TV), which is why the show fits so well into the British master/servant comedy genre.
Cooper said the inheritance tax changes were unfair on farmers who wanted to leave something to their families. He told PA Media:
We want our younger ones to take on our farms, our heritage.
And for example, for me, I haven’t got a farm to pass down but I have got a business that I’ve grown since I was 16 years old, so to pass that on to my child now I’m going to get taxed on that.
And actually, can he afford to take that business on? And if he has to then sell two tractors, for example, to pay that tax bill, is that going to be unprofitable to actually then make sure you have a livelihood off that business?
And Ireland said the government did not understand farmers.
The government have been in place for three or four months and come out and basically said this is how we want to deal with the farming in the countryside.
The strength of feeling comes from, gosh they’ve missed that by a country mile. They’re so far removed from actually the business of farming and the day to day operation.
12.20pm.) He asks people in the crowd to put their hands up. And then he asks anyone unaffected by the change to lower their hand. It looks as if all the hands stay up.
After joking about being “off my tits on codeine and paracetamol” (he’s not feeling well), Clarkson ends with a message to the government. He does not want to make it a “shouty” one, he says.
I beg the government to be big, to accept that this was rushed through. It wasn’t thought out, and it’s a mistake. That’s the big thing to do – admit it and back down.
11.20am) because he did not want to admit the real reason.
Asked about the past comment, he told PA Media:
That’s actually quite funny because the real reason I bought the farm was because I wanted to shoot, so I thought if I told a bunch of people that I bought a farm so I could shoot pheasants it might look bad.
So, I thought I better come up with another excuse, so I said inheritance tax. I actually didn’t know about inheritance tax until after I bought it. I didn’t mind, obviously, but the real reason I bought it is because I wanted to shoot.
Clarkson also accused the government of using a “blunderbuss’ to try to get money out of people using farms as a tax dodge and he urged the government to think again. He told PA Media:
If [Rachel Reeves] would have wanted to take out the likes of James Dyson and investment bankers and so on, she would have used a sniper’s rifle, but she’s used a blunderbuss and she’s hit all this lot.
It was – as I understand it – it was a very rushed last-minute decision and I think we all make mistakes in life, and I think it’s time for them to say ‘you know what, we’ve cocked this one up a bit’ and back down.
Source: theguardian.com
