ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER SAYS LABOUR’S TAX CHANGE WILL RESULT IN FARMS BEING SOLD OFF TO FOREIGN INVESTORS

ANDREW Lloyd Webber has criticised the government for increasing inheritance tax on farmers and said the change will mean that farms will be sold off wholesale to foreign investors.

Speaking on GB News, the composer told Bev Turner: “I farm about just under 5,000 acres myself, but I’m not here because of me or anything like that. I’m here to support the small farmers.

“I mean, they are the absolute salt of the earth. They’re the people who really keep our countryside going.

“I am a passionate lover of the countryside. In my way, I’ve done what I can with my farm, which we’ve farmed now for 40 years, quietly, we don’t bang the drum about that, but I’m here just really entirely for the small farmers, not for myself.

“In the longer term, what will happen is they’ll all be bought by, probably, foreigners, outsiders, people who are not buying it for the love of the countryside. They’re buying it purely as a long-term investment.

“Many people are hovering around at the moment, rubbing their hands in glee about all of this and they, I can assure you, they’re not British.

“I think they [government] got confused. I think that they’ve confused people who have been buying land just for the sake of buying land to avoid inheritance tax with the people who actually farm the land and do it themselves.

“They may, on paper, have a big asset, but in practice, that asset produces nothing.

“And I read a really very good comment, that if actually somebody came on Dragon’s Den and said that this asset only pays back 0.2%, which is what most farms do, Dragon’s Den would say, this ‘ain’t a business’.”