Ahead of next week’s Budget I’ve written to Chancellor Rachel Reeves warning her to re-think her plans or she will devastate family businesses across the UK.
I make no apology for repeatedly raising the issue as I cannot sit quietly while this government destroys our much-loved businesses, create higher levels of unemployment and further economic damage.
Approximately 85 per cent of businesses in the UK are family owned. From April changes to Business Property Relief (BPR) will see the current 100 per cent exemption (for qualifying business) from inheritance tax end. These rules were introduced nearly 50 years ago to protect family-owned businesses to ensure that when the owner died, the business did not die with them and have to be sold or broken up. But under this anti-business Labour government that safety net is being removed.
Economic experts from the Confederation of Business Industry (CBI) believe these changes will result in more than 125,000 jobs losses and the reduction in the value of goods and services produced across the economy will be £9.4 billion.
In the coming months, businesses face the toughest of decisions. Many have told me they are considering borrowing heavily to cover a sudden tax bill but that will be at the expense of investment and local jobs. Many more say they will have no choice but to sell up – destroying their livelihood, and security for their staff.
Across Tatton we have many family businesses, some that go back four or five generations who now fear the future. I will never forget a conversation I had last year with one of our local businesses who told me the business survived two world wars, the Spanish flu, the high tax and economic lunacy of the 1970s, and even the covid lockdowns but Rachel Reeves’s 2024 Budget would be the death of them.
Family businesses are an integral part of our economic success and one we cannot jeopardise. They have invested in their communities and contributed to local and national prosperity delivering sustainable growth and planning for generations to come, yet this government seems intent on destroying them.
The Chancellor must reconsider these changes before it is too late. She cannot balance the country’s books at the expense of family businesses which have made such a positive contribution to our communities over many generations.
