This week the some of my colleagues forced a vote in Parliament to protest against Labour’s Family Farm Tax, which has already prompted crowds of angry farmers to descend on Westminster to stage a mass demonstration.

Farmers are rightly worried and upset at changes in the Budget which will mean many of them will not be able to pass farms, which have been in their families for generations, on to their own children without crippling financial penalties. Small family farms are now liable for inheritance tax, a cost that for many will simply be unaffordable.

We already know that, for so many, farming is not well paid. Instead the job is a labour of love that involves taking responsibility for the stewardship of land which is part of a farmer’s family heritage.

Looking after the land, cultivating it, protecting it, is a costly business, that involves huge capital expenditure on machinery, buildings, and other unglamorous but necessary items without which a farm could not be run.

Farmers’ margins are tight, and most have to make serious sacrifices just to make these purchases or upkeep their operating equipment out of their limited cash reserves.

It’s now expected that many will not be able to pay the large death fees and have to sell the land as a result, maybe to large corporations, or developers, many of whom are based outside the UK.

The result of these changes is obvious.

We all found out at great cost during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the effect over-reliance on foreign supply can do to the money in our pockets. With the destabilisation of a region that produces vast quantities of the global grain supply, by another which delivered so much of its energy. This led to the massive inflation of 2021, when energy and food prices soared.

The National Farmers Union has warned that in the short-term, the Family Farm tax will likely add to inflation and the cost of food.

But in the long run, the risk of corporations and developers buying our farmland will undermine our food security and autonomy at a time when the world has rarely felt so unstable.

It won’t only be the death of the countryside as we know it, but it’ll be people from Hampshire paying the price, through increases in our food bills.

That’s why this is not just an issue being taken up by Members of Parliament who represent rural communities, but by all Conservative MPs and many others like myself.

To put this in perspective 97 per cent of people in the UK don’t pay inheritance tax. After this change, considering the combination of the value of land, machinery, buildings, and other assets, most farmers will. In this protest farmers are asking merely for recognition that they are different from individuals who pay inheritance tax, not for special treatment.

I urge anyone who thinks that this measure is wrong to join the campaign to reverse the Family Farm tax, and preserve our national food security.