Bedfordshire farmers support mental health charity

The toys were part of a symbolic display outside the annual NFU Conference in Westminster, on February 25, representing the farming futures that could be lost by the government’s planned family farm tax policy.

They have now been donated to the Mind in Camden shop on Camden Road, Camden, central London.

Money raised from sales of the toys will help Mind in its work to support mental health.

Thousands of toys were donated by NFU members and have been sent to charities around the country.

Among them were NFU Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire Chair Freya Morgan.

She said: “Several farmers across Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire donated farm toys and it’s wonderful to see them being put to good use.

“They will bring joy to children in the city of London.

“I hope, also, they spark an interest in farming and the countryside in some children who may never have been to a farm and seen a tractor in real life.”

Mrs Morgan, who runs an arable farm near Bedford, added: “Mental health is a big issue in farming, and wider society, and we are proud to do our bit to help a great charity in its work to support people dealing with metal health challenges.”

The Mind in Camden shop is in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the NFU will continue to highlight to all political parties why the family farm tax policy must be scrapped.

The Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign is calling on the government to reconsider its planned changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR).

The NFU says the government is working off the wrong figures and has miscalculated the impact of the changes, with concerns they could force many small and medium-sized family farms out of business.

All the UK’s major supermarkets have publicly stated their concerns over the threat to national food security.

The NFU has put forward an alternative proposal to the government, worked on with tax experts, which calls on inheritance tax to only be applied to qualifying assets if they are disposed of within a seven-year period after death, and so tax is paid only when the finance is available to do so, in keeping with sound principles of taxation.

This proposal meets the government’s aims of raising revenue, avoids penalising elderly farm owners, breaking up family farms, and stifling investment in farm businesses and takes away the incentive to use APR and BPR solely as a way of avoiding tax.