Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party is pushing on with its general election campaign soft-launch, with newly appointed finance spokesman Robert Jenrick making strict fiscal rectitude, including a contraction in the availability of welfare a key part of the offer.
A “benefits bomb” is “set to bankrupt Britain”, Reform UK’s “shadow chancellor of the exchequer” Robert Jenrick said in a City of London speech on Wednesday, saying a key part of the party’s mission will be to get the finances of the state on an even keel.
At present the British government spends more than it receives in taxation and other income, and has been in deficit all this century, with today’s expenses added to borrowing for future generations to clear. Yet this is spooking bond markets, Jenrick noted, with the cost of borrowing rising in reflection of the markets’ worries about the country’s ability to one day repay. Jenrick told his audience that Britain spends more on servicing debt a year than the education and defence budgets combined.
One of the largest expenses for the British government is the welfare bill and Jenrick promised to tackle this soaring area of spending, most eye-catchingly of all stating Britain’s generous handouts should only be for Britons. He said: “We’ll make sure only British nationals can claim benefits in the first place.”
As reported in 2025, near three and a half million foreign-born people are claiming welfare of some sort in Britain. This includes over 1.2 million foreign citizens receiving Universal Credit, over 620,000 foreigners claiming other benefits including disability, childcare, housing, and pension, and a further 1.5 million people born abroad who came to Britain and later obtained a British passport.
Universal Credit payments to foreign households in Britain cost £10 billion in 2024, with one out of every six pounds spent on the programme not going to Britons.
As well as limiting welfare to Britons, former Tory minister turned Reform supporter Jenrick said other measures would be taken to encourage British citizens to get a job rather than subsist on handouts. Addressing the well documented soaring number of people who dropped out of the workforce over minor ailments, Jenrick said: “We are developing the most comprehensive plan for welfare reform in British politics… We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression, and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead encourage them into the dignity of work.”
This would be achieved in part by bringing back in-person assessments for disability payments including requiring “clinical diagnoses to weed out those who are choosing a life on benefits.”
Jenrick also cited the Motability scheme as ripe for streamlining, a free-car programme that became something of a bête noire for the British right after exposure of how it allows benefit recipients to parlay their entitlements into receiving a new car. The scale of the scheme is such that one fifth of all new cars sold in the UK are to the Motability organisation.
Trimming of the state would have to come before tax cuts for Britain’s hard-pressed middle, Jenrick said, stating: “we can’t make tax cuts while running a huge deficit in the vain hope that the Laffer curve alone will do the hard work for us”.
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