Sir Keir Starmer was accused of telling fairy tales last night after he claimed that most family farms will be ‘completely unaffected’ by Labour’s inheritance tax raid.

The Prime Minister insisted Labour is ‘for farmers’ and said rural communities would benefit from services funded by the £500million tax raid on the sector unveiled by Chancellor Rachel Reeves last month.

During a series of interviews with BBC local radio stations, he said he did ‘understand the concerns’ of farmers who staged a mass protest against the plans this week. But he said the ‘vast majority are completely unaffected’.

His claim was contradicted last night by new analysis from the National Farmers’ Union, which warned three-quarters of working farms will be hit by the Budget decision to end the sector’s traditional exemption from inheritance tax.

Shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins said: ‘Labour’s Family Farm Tax cannot be justified and they need to U-turn immediately. The numbers that they have parroted since the Budget are nothing more than a fairy tale.’

Ministers also faced criticism over new research showing that the Government is currently spending £536million in foreign aid to help farmers abroad.

The research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance shows that the projects date back up to a decade.

Baroness Mallalieu, the president of the Countryside Alliance and a farmer on Exmoor, told the Daily Telegraph Labour risked becoming the ‘cruel party’.

Jeremy Clarkson last night criticised Labour’s new inheritance tax rules.

He told The Times: ‘I have no doubts in my mind that if I were to be a figurehead for this campaign, there would be a lot of people saying, ‘I’ve heard it said that it’s because of people like James Dyson, and to a much, much, lesser extent me, that this tax has come about’.

‘But I don’t buy that, because if Reeves wanted to take out, let’s say, hedge fund managers who have land, she should have used a sniper’s rifle.

‘But she used a blunderbuss and she’s hit every single farmer.’