The BBC‘s ‘truth checking’ unit was under scrutiny last night after it quietly deleted a statement backing ministers’ claims in their tax-grab battle with farmers.
BBC Verify, a service set up to root out ‘misinformation’, wrote that the government’s figures were ‘likely’ to be right concerning the number of farms affected by the inheritance tax raid.
But after under-fire Keir Starmer trumpeted the BBC’s finding, triggering a political row about bias, the corporation quietly removed it from its website.
The Prime Minister is facing a growing backlash from farmers, celebrities and his own MPs over Labour‘s decision to impose 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1million.
More than 10,000 farmers and high-profile supporters including Jeremy Clarkson and Lord Lloyd Webber descended on Westminster to protest against the controversial policy on Tuesday.
But there have been dramatically conflicting estimates about how many farms will be dragged into the tax changes announced…