Reform UK announced plans to cut over £100 billion in government spending during its first 100 days in office if elected.
Recently installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham was left stumped at the dispatch box on Wednesday during his first PMQs since coming to power as to what — if any — spending cuts his left-wing Labour Party government would make as UK borrowing costs hit a three-decade high.
While Burnham was unable to provide an answer, Reform UK Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick said his party would slash government spending by £108 billion.
Jenrick, who has been tapped by Nigel Farage to be the top man at the Treasury should his party come to power, said that a Reform government would look to slash welfare spending by £50 billion, cut another £20-30 billion from various leftist projects like net zero and foreign aid while reducing the number of deep state civil servants, and finally seek to reduce government debt interest by £28 billion.
The Newark MP said that such cuts would not only measure the financial markets, but would enable Reform to provide much-needed tax relief to the British public, who have been suffering under the highest tax burden since the Second World War.
“Andy Burnham said we did not need to be in hock to the bond markets but that is precisely where he has found himself in a matter of weeks,” Jenrick told The Telegraph.
“It turns out that putting on a t-shirt and being a jovial northerner isn’t enough to convince the markets you have got a strategy for the British economy, and they are taking fright.”
Reform has previously said that it would seek to slash the nation’s welfare budget by barring most foreign nationals from receiving benefits the party says were intended for British citizens.
Jenrick said last month that by removing migrants — including settled EU citizens who were grandfathered in during Brexit — from the national welfare rolls would save £21 billion ($28.5bn) per year by 2029, or £700 ($950) per household.
The party would also look to cut welfare spending on those claiming health issues to pre-COVID levels, with party boss Nigel Farage frequently pointing to the growing number of people being paid not to work for dubious conditions like “anxiety”.
Meanwhile, Reform laid out plans to require the hundreds of thousands of people who have been jobless for over a year to work on government projects to receive their welfare checks.
“If you are, for example, someone who works in a distribution centre, like a lot of people in my constituency, you get up early, get your kids ready for school, work hard and then come home where you are struggling to cover your bills that keep going up,” Jenrick said.
“But you might be living next door to someone living on benefits whose curtains are closed, maybe has a Motability car on the drive and has Just Eat bringing a takeaway to them. That can’t be right and, under Reform, there will be no more something for nothing.”
The announcement comes in the wake of the interest rate on government debt hitting 5.91 per cent this week, a nearly 30-year high, as the bond markets appear to be skittish over Prime Minister Burnham’s plans to ramp up public spending even further to pay for his plans to splash cash on regions outside of London.
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