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The director of a 160-year-old haulage firm put out of business by a cyber-attack has urged companies to be on their guard.

The main street is studded with empty shops, many reportedly put out of business by the cost of repeated floods.

But Gupta said they are “silent casualties” of the inferno: technically intact, but effectively put out of business for the foreseeable future.

“Does that mean I won’t make that book? No, I will still make that book as long as I can. But if I’m put out of business — as I very nearly have been — then I won’t make those books anymore. And that will be the ultimate effect of book banning.”

When it was put to him on Radio Lincolnshire that some family farms would be put out of business by having to pay inheritance tax, he replied that in a typical case, where a farm was first passed to a spouse and later to a son or daughter, the threshold before the tax was payable would be £3m.