As someone who has worked in farming and rural policy for much of my working life, when thousands of farmers came to Westminster to vent their despair at the Labour government’s Family Farm Tax, it was impossible not to be angered on their behalf - writes Rachel Gilmour.

Farmers up and down the country feel betrayed by this out of touch Labour government, who don’t understand rural communities.

In my constituency, we have 1,600 holdings, with hundreds of them set to be affected by this change.

That’s hundreds of families, who now must face the potential of being the last generation who hold their farm.

Hundreds of farms which might not exist in the very near future, or at least not in their current state.

Let’s be clear who this tax will hit: family farms.

People who farm their property with little to no profits, investing all they can into their crops, their livestock, and their business, to produce food for our tables, and to provide Britain with food security.

As I have long said, no farmers, no food!

Why is the government deaf to our criticism over this issue?

The large agricultural companies won’t be affected by this measure, and nor will the people that the government say they are pursuing on this tax loophole: the people ‘gaming’ the inheritance tax system.

What this measure will do is clobber the same people who got hit hardest by the Conservatives’ agricultural neglect and economic vandalism.

Without looking again at this measure and reconsidering the cut-off levels – as even the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has asked the Treasury to do – these proposals could ring the death knell for a generation of local farmers.

These farms, and their farmers, will either be subsumed into ever larger commercial farming operations, or end up endlessly parcelling up their holdings, just to pay this onerous death duty; leaving their farms too small to be viable.

In the House of Commons and outside, I have been fighting on behalf of my farmers in Tiverton and Minehead.

The minister didn’t answer my question in the House of Commons, but I am not deterred: I have arranged a meeting with the Secretary of State for EFRA.

I will pursue this come what may.

I will keep pressing on behalf of my farmers in Tiverton and Minehead; I met many of them in London on Tuesday, but I want to see more of them more often.

Please get in touch with my office to arrange a meeting at my farmers’ surgeries at Cutcombe.

Let me listen to your voices.

Tell me your stories.

Only then can I take this ignorant, incompetent government to task.