Reform UK has been accused of excluding the most vulnerable from society and punishing non-Britons living in the UK as it prepared to outline £50bn of cuts to benefits for disabled people and foreign nationals. Robert Jenrick, Reform’s finance spokesperson, will detail the plans for £20bn of cuts to disability benefits overall, as well as another £21bn from stopping foreign nationals – including EU citizens with settled status – claiming almost any benefits, among other cuts. The party said the plans were aimed at reducing the welfare bill by a quarter, with personal independence payments (Pip) replaced by another cash benefit that would be restricted to only the “gravely ill and severely challenged”.
It said “lower level conditions” would get support overseen by councils and mayors. In relation to foreign nationals, the plans extend proposals set out by Nigel Farage last year in which he claimed that banning migrants from claiming some benefits and scrapping indefinite leave to remain would save £234bn over several decades. Jenrick’s policy paper goes further by stopping foreign-born households claiming universal credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare, free school meals or disability benefits.
The paper says the change would save the taxpayer £21bn a year by the fifth year of the policy, and would also apply to those with EU settled status. However, foreign-born parents with British-born children would still be eligible for child benefit and free school meals. Best for Britain, the pro-EU campaign group, said denying benefits to those with indefinite leave to remain would tear up Britain’s EU withdrawal agreement.
Tom Brufatto, the executive director of policy at the organisation, said: “Our polling shows that people do want to renegotiate our relationship with Europe, but by moving closer, not by damaging ties with vital allies and punishing our neighbours, colleagues and friends who have settled status here.” Jenrick claimed paying benefits to non-British people was “plain immoral” – even though many would have paid into the tax system through working. He also wrote in the Telegraph over the weekend that the amount spent on disability benefits was “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”. However, Jenrick was accused by campaigners of making life harder for disabled people and of not understanding that it would not save money.
Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP who led the campaign against previous disability benefit cuts under Keir Starmer, said: “When Pip helps people go to work, play a role in our society and simply live, threatening to remove Pip demonstrates that Reform do not want disabled people to play a full role in our society. Mothin Ali, the Green party deputy leader, said the “establishment parties are all trying to outdo each other when it comes to who can be the most xenophobic, who can punch down the hardest to the most vulnerable in our country, and who can cut the most support from disabled people”. He added: “It is cowardly to take from the most defenceless when we should be taxing the super-wealthy, including those who are in the privileged position of accepting £5m donations,” he added, referring to Farage, the leader of Reform UK.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives, who are trying to show they are taking a tough stance on welfare, said Reform’s announcement was “cobbled together” and claimed only the Tories had a “credible plan to save £23bn from welfare alongside our root and branch review of sickness benefits”.
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