Nigel Farage‘s Reform UK today blasted Rachel Reeves‘ ‘treachery’ for hiking taxes on Britons while spending ‘extortionate’ amounts on foreign nationals.
At a Westminster press conference, Mr Farage and Zia Yusuf, Reform’s policy chief, set out five major measures to save £25billion in the current financial year alone.
Reform said this would be enough to plug the black hole in the public finances that the Chancellor is facing ahead of her Budget next week.
Mr Farage and Mr Yusuf argued this would allow Ms Reeves to avoid having to hike taxes again on 26 November.
The Chancellor is widely expected to announce a ‘smorgasbord’ of tax rises next Wednesday in a desperate bid to balance the books.
But Mr Farage and Mr Yusuf said Ms Reeves would be making a ‘choice’ to hike levies rather than slash spending.
Reform’s proposals include slashing overseas aid, restricting benefits for migrants and deporting foreign criminals.
Mr Yusuf said: ‘These are savings that Rachel Reeves could choose to make in her Budget.’
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK today blasted Rachel Reeves’ ‘treachery’ for hiking taxes on Britons while spending ‘extortionate’ amounts on foreign nationals
At a Westminster press conference, Mr Farage and Zia Yusuf set out five major measures that he said would save £25billion in the current financial year alone
‘The likelihood is she will choose not to do those things and instead choose to raise taxes on British people,’ added Reform’s head of policy.
‘Because Labour is making the conscious and deliberate decision to continue funding extortionate amounts to foreign nationals, to the detriment of British citizens.
‘I don’t know what to call that, frankly, in my view, it’s treachery. I think it’s appalling, British people are sick and tired of it.
‘We’re pleading with Rachel Reeves – let’s enact these, let’s raise and save £25billion, plug the black hole you’ve created and put British people first.’
Mr Farage, the Reform leader, told the press conference: ‘Putting up taxes in this Budget is a choice.
‘It’s a choice the Chancellor is going to choose to make, in whatever form in the end they manifest themselves.
‘What we do know is an increasing tax burden is demotivating, is sending more and more people abroad.’
Revised figures from the Office for National Statistics, published on Tuesday, showed 257,000 British nationals left the UK in 2024.
This compared to an initial estimate of 77,000.
Mr Farage added: ‘I really worry, particularly about the number of thirty-something entrepreneurs who are leaving the country because they really fear and worry about the direction we’re going in.
‘I want to reiterate, we as a party are proposing massive cuts in spending and massive cuts in welfare spending.’
Ms Reeves is expected to use her Budget to freeze income tax thresholds, impose a new mansion tax on the most valuable properties and charge electric car owners for every mile they drive.
The biggest cut earmarked by Reform is capping the overseas aid budget at just £1billion a year, saving as much as £10billion.
Reform believes the UK ‘simply cannot afford’ current levels of aid spending – with £13.7billion set aside for 2025-26, including more than £2billion for asylum accommodation – while ‘impoverishing its own citizens’.
The party said that £1billion would be enough for Britain to retain its seat at the table on international bodies such as the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as well as providing disaster relief.
Reform also said Labour could raise £5billion extra this year from the Immigration Health Surcharge paid by foreign students and workers to use the NHS.
The party want the annual fee to be more than doubled, from £1,035 to £2,718, to reflect the actual cost of the health service.
Reform would also force those applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain to pay the charge for the first time, although foreign health and care workers would remain exempt.
Another £580million could be saved by deporting the 10,000 Foreign National Offenders currently behind bars, the party said.
And, under Reform’s plans, a further £6billion could be found by ending Universal Credit payments to foreign nationals – including the millions of EU citizens given Settled Status since Brexit.
Reform said that three months’ notice should be given, during which time negotiations could be opened with Brussels over the move.
Mr Farage said, before the EU referendum, there were already four times as many EU nationals claiming benefits in the UK than expats doing the same overseas.
Mr Yusuf warned that since then the number has increased seven-fold.
The final cut Reform called on Ms Reeves to implement is to the disability benefits bill for Britons, as well as foreign nationals.
The party said £3.5billion could be saved this year by stopping people with anxiety disorders from claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP).
Reform claimed last month that almost half a million people are claiming PIP for anxiety disorders and that most should be put on a Fast Track to Work scheme instead.
At a separate press conference on Tuesday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Mr Farage and Reform of deceiving voters.
‘Right now, Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf are holding a press conference on how they would save money, but in reality they want to increase benefits by scrapping the two-child benefit cap,’ she said.
‘They just don’t get it.’
Mrs Badenoch also hit out at Reform’s suggestion of stripping welfare payments from EU citizens who have settled status in post-Brexit Britain.
‘It would be a bad idea because we spent a lot of time negotiating those rights, not just for EU citizens in this country, but British citizens in other countries of the EU,’ she said.
‘You start unpicking that and you start unpicking all of the work that was done, year after year after year, with a lot of pain and effort during those years when we were negotiating Brexit.’
The Tory leader added was ‘completely ridiculous’ for Mr Farage to say he would just renegotiate that settlement.
‘This man does not know what he’s talking about,’ she said. ‘I’m a former trade secretary. Even with friendly countries, trade negotiations are very, very difficult.’
She continued: ‘It is wrong of him to deceive people, lie to them and make them think this is going to be easy.’
A Labour Party spokesman said: ‘Reform can put forward as many back of a fag packet policies as they like – they don’t have a plan to deliver for the British people.
‘We won’t take any lectures from Nigel Farage, who said Liz Truss’ mortgage-busting mini-Budget was the best Budget since 1986. It’s working people who are still paying the price of that recklessness.’