Article: Claim Labour handed £536m to foreign farmers is Mostly False Image description: 02/05/2020. London, United Kingdom. Robert Jenrick Covid-19 Presser. The Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick chairs the Daily Covid-19 Press Conference inside No10 Downing Street with Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

Claim Labour handed £536m to foreign farmers is Mostly False

Farmers are continuing to protest the UK Government’s decision to change inheritance tax rules, which they fear will impact their livelihoods. 

Demonstrations are planned for the end of January, as many in the farming community say they could be forced to sell their farms if the new rules come into force. 

One claim causing controversy suggests the UK Government is prioritising farmers overseas via foreign aid ahead of those in Britain. 

Former Conservative minister Robert Jenrick made this claim in a post on X in November 2024. 

Labour hand £536m to foreign farmers, paid for by hiking tax on our own farmers.

Robert Jenrick

Ferret Fact service looked at this claim and found it Mostly False.

Ferret Fact Service | Scotland's impartial fact check project

Evidence

In October 2024, the UK Government revealed its 2025 budget, with changes made to inheritance tax on agricultural properties. 

Previously, agricultural property relief meant that most farming property was exempt from inheritance tax, meaning farm assets could be passed down tax-free. The budget announced that from April 2026, this exemption would be restricted to £1m. This means that any asset value higher than £1m would only get a 50 per cent tax relief.

This led to significant anger in the farming community, and a series of demonstrations were held to oppose the move. 

Claim Labour handed £536m to foreign farmers is Mostly False 3

In late November, Robert Jenrick posted the claim on X that the Labour government had given “£536m to foreign farmers, paid for by hiking tax on our own farmers”.

This came from an article in the Daily Express newspaper, which cited research produced by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a pressure group that campaigns to lower taxes in the UK. 

The research carried out by the Taxpayers’ Alliance stated that “£536.4m is being spent on ten active funding programmes focused on supporting farmers and farming communities abroad”. 

This information was gleaned through analysis of the UK Government’s development tracker, which shows the amount of money spent in foreign aid on different projects throughout the world. 

The Taxpayers’ Alliance did not respond to requests from The Ferret to provide the detailed methodology of its analysis, but did say that the “£536.4 million in ten foreign aid programmes for farmers identified cover varying time periods”.

Nine specific projects are mentioned in its press release, covering various projects in countries including Brazil, Ghana, Somalia, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

The largest agriculture-related project included in the analysis is “Support to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP)”. GAFSP is a worldwide project launched by the G20 nations in 2007 with the stated aim of improving food resilience in the world’s poorest countries. 

The UK Government has committed £206m to this project, and states its contribution is to “improve agricultural productivity” and “increase farmers’ access to markets”.

Robert Jenrick’s post on X stated that the Labour government had given £536m to foreign farmers, and paid for it with the changes to inheritance tax, but this is not accurate. 

The £206m given to the GAFSP was to be spent between October 2012 and June 2031.

By the time Labour got into power in July 2024, about £180m of this budget had already been spent, with the money being initially committed by the previous Conservative government. 

This is also the case with a number of other projects mentioned in the analysis. Many spent a majority of their budgets before the current government took office. 

More than two-thirds of the money allocated to the nine projects referenced in the Taxpayers’ Alliance press release had been spent before the election in July 2024. 

Ferret Fact Service verdict: Mostly False

This claim is Mostly False

Robert Jenrick’s claim that Labour is spending £536m on overseas farmers while increasing tax for UK farmers is misleading. The figures do not relate to spending on overseas aid from the Labour government. Instead they are the total budgets of agriculture projects which are still active, many of which used the majority of their budget during the previous government. 

Ferret Fact Service (FFS) is a non-partisan fact checker, and signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network fact-checkers’ code of principles.

All the sources used in our checks are publicly available and the FFS fact-checking methodology can be viewed here.

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Email us at factcheck@theferret.scot or join our Facebook group.

Main image: London, 2020. The then Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick chairs the Daily Covid-19 Press Conference inside No10 Downing Street with Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries. Credit: Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

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