CONTINUING protests against the changes proposed for inheritance tax on working farms have fallen on ‘predictably deaf ears’, according to the MP for Torridge and Tavistock.

Sir Geoffrey Cox, said that after a protest held in Westminster on Monday, February 10, he participated in a debate in the House of Commons related to a petition to the government signed by 151,193 signatories.

During the debate, parliamentarians debated the petition, which called on the government to cancel their plans to amend the current relief on inheritance tax for agricultural land, citing concerns that it was being exploited by the wealthy to purchase land in order to avoid paying the ‘death duties’ in their estate.

Both Torridge and Tavistock and the neighbouring constituency of North Cornwall, whose MP, Ben Maguire, also participated in the debate arguing in favour of the petition’s calls to remove the changes, were among the highest numbers of signatories of the petition.

After the debate, Sir Cox criticised the response of the government to the petition, calling the junior minister sent to respond to the debate as ‘hapless’ and the government ‘predictably deaf’.

Sir Geoffrey, the MP for Torridge and Tavistock said: “I joined farming families from Torridge and Tavistock, and throughout the United Kingdom to support their call to the Government to change direction on its callous tax on family farms.

“Later, in the House of Commons during the petition debate on working farms, where Torridge and Tavistock had the seventh highest signatories in the country, I made calls to the hapless junior Treasury minister, delegated by the chancellor to respond to the debate, who was sadly but predictably deaf to the pleas of every expert rural organisation and industry body, which overwhelmingly regard the tax as a catastrophe for the countryside.”