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Reynolds tells farmers 'that is it' as they protest against her, claiming inheritance tax U-turn does not go far enough

Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter.

Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, has insisted “that is it” in response to farmers claiming the inheritance tax U-turn does not go far enough.

Shortly before Christmas, in a major concession to the rural lobby, the government announced that the tax-free inheritance tax threshold for farms will be set at £2.5m, not £1m as previously planned. It was a surprise announcement and the National Farmers’ Union indicated that, while it would still like inheritance tax on farms to be removed entirely, it viewed this as a reasonable outcome.

But today, as Reynolds spoke at the Oxford Farming Conference, she was greeted by farmers still protesting about the policy.

In her speech to the conference, she was keen to champion her role in delivering the U-turn. She said:

Since starting this role in September I’ve listened to farmers and stakeholders about your cncerns on proposed changes to inheritance tax. You told me the threshold was too low. You told me it would hit small family farms. We listened, and we are making changes.

Emma Reynolds speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

But Reynolds lost her patience with the inheritance tax protesters outside the venue. They are asking for the inheritance tax to be scrapped altogether. Speaking as horns of tractors blared outside, attempting to drown her out, she said:

In terms of inheritance tax changes, that is it. I also say with the greatest respect to those outside, it is those inside who have engaged with us constructively and relatively quietly that have had an influence in this process, not those blaring their horns.

Speaking to journalists after delivering her speech, Reynolds also claimed that Labour was committed to voters in the “rural wall” of seats it won in 2024. She said:

If the Tories took the red wall in 2019 – and I was part of that, by the way, I represented a seat in the Midlands – we took the rural wall in 2024. We’ve got 49 rural seats and 87 semi rural on one of them. So 136 rural and semi rural seats. That’s a huge representation in parliament.

And I have conversations with those MPs week in, week out, and they are expressing concerns or ideas to ministers all the time, and I’m doing all that I can to ensure that rural communities know that we’re on their side. As a government, we truly care about rural Britain, because we are the, you know, we can have. We are the party with more representation than others.

Reynolds’ team has been keen to her engagement and supposed popularity with farmers. Reynolds was half an hour late to meet journalists for a Q and A, and a source close to her said this was because so many farmers were stopping her in the corridor to thank her for her work.

Farmers protesting outside the Oxford Farming Conference today. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Farmers protesing outside the Oxford Farming Conference. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Right to protest is under attack in England and Wales, reports warn

The right to protest is under attack in England and Wales with laws trampling over human rights protections and more oppressive restrictions in the pipeline, two major reports have warned. Haroon Siddique has the story.

Louise Haigh says government should quit X because child sexual abuse imagery making its use 'unconscionable'

Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.

Louise Haigh, the Labour MP former transport secretary, is calling for the government and her party to quit X in the wake of a wave of digitally altered images on the site showing women and children with their clothes removed.

In a message given to the Guardian, and to be posted on social media, Haigh says she has not personally used X for some time. She goes on:

It was already an unpleasant place prior to its takeover by Elon Musk but since his acceptance of hate speech and anonymous online abusers, it has become utterly unusable.

I continued to maintain an account and occasionally post because a critical mass of people, including the government and journalists who we need to communicate with as MPs, remained on the site.

However, the revelations around the enablement, if not encouragement, of child sexual abuse mean it is unconscionable to use the site for another minute.

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

Ministers are under pressure to defend why the government still uses X as a main source of communications, although Downing Street has said it will fully back an ongoing Ofcom investigation into the site.

Yesterday the Commons women and equalities committee said it has decided to stop using X.

X has said it takes action against illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, “by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary”.

Mandelson accuses European leaders of ‘histrionic’ reaction to Trump’s Greenland stance

On the subject of Greenland, Peter Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister and former UK ambassador to the US, has argued in an article for the Spectator that European leaders like Keir Starmer are over-reacting to Donald Trump’s comments about the Arctic territory. Alexandra Topping has the story here.

The Mandelson article is not just about Greenland; it is about Trump’s approach to foreign policy in general, and why Mandelson thinks that Trump is right to view the so-called rules-based international as essentially defunct. I wrote more about this on the blog yesterday.

Why No 10's readout suggests Starmer's call with Trump last night may have been awkward

At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning reporters will try to get further details of Keir Starmer’s conversation with Donald Trump last night. Given the usual No 10 reticence when it comes to discussing these calls, they are unlikely to get very far.

Which would be a shame, because it sounds as if it may have been awkward. For the record, here is the official readout from a No 10 spokesperson issued last night.

The prime minister spoke with President Trump this evening.

They discussed the joint operation to intercept the Bella 1 as part of shared efforts to crack down on sanctions busting, recent progress on Ukraine and the US operation in Venezuela.

The prime minister also set out his position on Greenland.

These readouts are always fairly bland, but this one is unusual for two reasons.

First, whoever writes up the readout of a call between the PM and an ally can normally find at least one point on which they can say the two leaders agreed. (For example, Starmer and Trump “agreed that we all must work together at this critical moment to bring about a just and lasting peace”, as No 10 said after a call in November.) There is none of that in this statement.

And, second, readouts from a call with an ally almost always end with a line saying they “agreed to keep in touch”, or something similar. That is missing too.

Starmer has declined to back US claims that the arrest of Nicolás Maduro was legal, and, with other European leaders, he has dismissed US suggestions that it has a right to take over Greenland.

John Healey declines to comment on report saying up to 7,500 UK troops would go Ukraine as part of peacekeeping force

According to a report by Larisa Brown in the Times, Britain would send fewer than 7,500 troops to Ukraine as part of the Coalition of the Willing plans to boost the country’s security in the event of a peace deal. The total force would number about 15,000 soldiers at most, with France providing most of the others, she says.

Brown reports:

UK military chiefs had originally proposed sending 10,000 troops as part of a wider 64,000-strong “coalition of the willing” force but this has been deemed unsustainable inside the Ministry of Defence given the current size of the British Army.

The assumption is that fewer than 7,500 British soldiers will be deployed, two military sources disclosed, although that figure is also expected to be a struggle for the UK, which has only around 71,000 trained personnel in the regular army.

In the Commons last night John Healey, the defence secretary, was repeatedly asked about this report when he gave a statement to MPs about the Coalition of the Willing deal, and the UK’s involvement in the US seizure of a sanctioned, Russian-flagged tanker.

Healey refused to confirm the figure, but he did not dismiss it either. In response to one of the questions about it, he told MPs:

I will simply not go into detail on the nature of the activities in the deployment, the numbers of troops that are likely to be deployed to Ukraine or the commitments that other nations have made … We will deploy only if there is a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Disclosing, let alone debating, those sort of details would only make Putin wiser.

Emma Reynolds faces protest as she speaks at Oxford Farming Conference

Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter.

Environment secretary Emma Reynolds is on a charm offensive with farmers at the Oxford Farming Conference today.

Farmers have told the Guardian that her team has been anxious to organise one to one meetings with them and the secretary of state. She will be spending the day speaking to individual farmers and farming groups, and listening to their concerns. Farming minister Angela Eagle will be having dinner with farmers at the Oxford Real Farming Conference (a rival conference focused on organic and regenerative farming) tonight.

Farmers have been extremely displeased so far with the Labour government, which recently did a partial U-turn on a policy to introduce a new inheritance tax on agricultural land and property. Labour has also hiked tax on fertilisers and some farming vehicles.

Since the U-turn, which exempts farming families with up to £5m of assets from the new tax, Reynolds is hoping she can win over the rural community. A recent poll found that 0% of famers would vote Labour.

This morning, a small protest of tractors has gathered outside the Examination Halls, where the conference is taking place. They are already beeping in an extremely irritating way, and do not seem placated by the U Turn.

Today, Reynolds is due to announce a re-opening of the delayed Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme and prioritise it towards small farmers.

Henry Tufnell, who represents Mid and South Pembrokeshire and who is in the rural caucus of Labour MPs and sits on the environment committee, is at the conference. He said his “one wish for 2026” is a “reset of Labour’s relationship” with farmers.

Here are some pictures of the protest from Farmers Weekly.

McFadden says Farage's opposition to deploying UK peacekeeping troops to Ukraine shows he's taking 'Kremlin line'

Yesterday Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said that he would vote against any proposal to deploy British troops to Ukraine.

Speaking on LBC this morning, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, claimed this was fresh evidence of Reform UK being pro-Russian. He said:

It is in the British national interest that we do that [contribute British troops to a force boosting Ukraine’s security in the event of a peace deal]. That is why it is so concerning for me to see some politicians, like Mr Farage for example, immediately come out and parrot the Kremlin line and say that he wouldn’t support this. Perhaps it is no surprise he parrots the Kremlin line, because he does it quite a lot.

But this is someone who aspires to be the prime minister of the United Kingdom and that should give all of your listeners pause for thought. Can we trust someone who is so keen to parrot the Kremlin line with the future security of the United Kingdom? I certainly don’t think so and I think his statement yesterday will make a lot of other people reach the same conclusion.

How many children, and households, will benefit, region by region, by removal of two-child benefit cap

Labour has put out these figures, from the Department for Work and Pensions, showing how many children, and how many households, will benefit from the lifting of the two-child benefit cap region by region. The figures are from April 2025.

Number of children, and households, benefitting from removal of two-child benefit cap Photograph: Labour/DWP

Starmer says Reform UK and Tories are in ‘cruel alliance’ to raise child poverty, as bill to get rid of two-child benefit cap unveiled

Good morning. Today is an important day for anti-poverty policy because the government is publishing its universal credit (removal of two-child limit) bill, the legislation that will implement the budget pledge to get rid of the Tory law that removed child-related UC benefit payments for third and subsequent children. The government says this will lift almost 500,000 children out of poverty – making this the biggest single anti child poverty measure implemented by a government in modern times.

Keir Starmer is on a visit this morning publicising the legislation. What is interesting about this is that, before the 2024 general election, Starmer was not just not committing to get rid of the cap; he was presenting that as evidence to voters that Labour would be tough on spending. In July 2023 he told Laura Kuenssberg he was “not changing that policy”. And, when challenged about this two days later at a conference with a leftwing audience, he said:

We keep saying collectively as a party that we have to make tough decisions. And in the abstract, everyone says: ‘That’s right Keir.’ But then we get into the tough decision – we’ve been in one of those for the last few days – and they say: ‘We don’t like that, can we just not make that one, I’m sure there is another tough decision somewhere else we can make.’ But we have to take the tough decisions.

Two and a half years later, the line is very different. Today Starmer will talk proudly about getting rid of the two-child benefit cap and use child poverty as an issue to attack Reform UK and the Tories. According to extracts released in advance, he will say:

Nigel Farage seems intent on linking arms with the Conservatives in a cruel alliance to push kids who need help back into poverty. This child poverty pact is something that should worry us all. These aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet – these are children’s life chances at stake.

Labour chooses the other road – lifting almost half a million kids out of child poverty – and that’s what we’re doing this year. It’s the right thing to do for them, their families and our economy. It’s astonishing that Reform and the Tories would undo that change and leave a lost generation of kids in every corner of Britain.

The Conservatives would bring back the two-child benefit cap in full, and Reform UK would bring it back for all families, apart from those with two parents working full-time. Labour analysis says this means just 3,700 of the 470,000 families affected by the cap would benefit from the Nigel Farage exemption.

At a press conference yesterday Farage offered a new argument (which has not been set out as formal Reform UK policy), suggesting benefits like this should only go to British-born people. As Jessica Elgot reports, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, responded by suggesting this was immoral.

Getting rid of the two-child benefit cap will cost about £3bn. The Tories and Reform UK are both saying that, by gettting rid of benefit spending like this, they would free up money for tax cuts. But, in an interview this morning, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, argued that this £3bn was “an investment in children’s future”. He told Sky News:

We came into office with a manifesto commitment to reduce child poverty. We did it the last time we were in power. Child poverty has risen by about 900,000 since 2010.

I don’t see this just as a cash transfer in terms of that £3 billion, I see it as an investment in children’s future, because we know that children from the poorest families will end up doing less well at school, less than a quarter of them get five good GCSEs, we know they’re four times more likely to have mental health problems later in life.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.35am: Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, speaks at the Oxford Farming Conference. As Helena Horton reports, she will say smaller farms will be prioritised for nature funding.

10am: Tim Davie, the outgoing director general of the BBC, and interim chief executive Jonathan Munro give evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about the BBC World Service.

Morning: Keir Starmer and Bridget Philliipson, the education secretary, are on a visit in Bedfordshire linked to the publication of the bill getting rid of the two-child benefit cap.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

11.30am: Lilian Greenwood, the transport minister, gives a statement to MPs on the road safety strategy announced yesterday.

Late afternoon: Peers debate a motion tabled by Charlie Falconer saying they should agreed to speed up the debate on the assisted dying bill so that it can return to the Commons in “reasonable time”.

Also, at some point this afternoon (UK time), David Lammy, the deputy PM, is meeting JD Vance, the US vice president. But a press conference has not been scheduled, and it is not clear yet how much either of them will want to say about their conversation.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.

If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.

I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.