Rob Copley from Copley's Farm Shop in Pontefract on Rachael Reeves' Budget
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00:00Okay, I'm Rob Copley from Farmer Copley's Farm Shop at Montefract and I've been asked to give a few thoughts about the budget.
00:06I think the budget's been very tough on business this time, probably too tough if I'm honest.
00:11I always think it's a question of balance and we do need to raise extra money from somewhere, but I do think they've gone too hard on businesses.
00:19One thing they've done is they've raised the minimum wage and they've increased NI.
00:23This is going to raise the majority of the money, but it's going to put a lot of businesses over the edge.
00:28There's a lot of businesses out there struggling at the moment.
00:31Us personally, we make between five and eight pence in the pound and this is going to put an extra 80 to 100,000 pound on our wage bill.
00:39And that's got to come from somewhere, so how can we do that?
00:43We can look at productivity in the staff, we can look at efficiency in the team, we can potentially reduce numbers.
00:50We're a customer facing business that tries to give really good customer service and to do that we need to carry extra team members.
00:57We'll be looking closely at that. I don't think I'll quite go on to self-service tills or pay by phone for the app in the cafe.
01:05But the one thing I do think the short of is I'm seeing no evidence of the government looking at productivity or efficiency in their departments.
01:12They're just putting it all onto the businesses and at some point it's got to give.
01:16So what we're going to do, we're probably going to end up putting prices up, which is going to come out of customers' pockets, but it's also going to create inflation.
01:25So food prices are probably going to rise.
01:28The other thing they've done is the inheritance tax on farms.
01:31I don't see that as affecting me in the short term, but when I look at the farms around here, and they did say it's a small percentage of farms,
01:39but actually when I look it's every single farm around here, it's going to affect them when they try and pass that farm on to the next generation.
01:47Farms traditionally are very asset rich and cash poor, so they're not going to be able to afford to pay these tax bills.
01:53So what they're going to have to do is sell off small parcels of land and it's probably going to change the landscape to be honest.
01:58We're going to end up with these small parcels popping up.
02:00So it's going to be really tough on farmers and I don't think the government has thought about it very well.
02:05They did pledge at the start they were going to help farmers, but they need to work on national food security much harder
02:12and look after farmers who we need three times a day to feed people.