Reform UK today vowed to cut £200 from the averge family’s energy bill by scrapping VAT and cutting green levies.
Nigel Farage‘s party said removing the 5 per cent rate of VAT on energy bills would save households around £85 a year.
It also outlined how axing the renewables obligation and carbon price support tax would save another £115.
Reform made the eye-catching promise amid intense concern about the impact of the Iran war on household costs.
Tehran is currently blockading the vital Strait of Hormuz, which is stemming the flow of oil and gas from the Middle East and pushing up energy prices across the globe.
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, said it was ‘outrageous’ that while Brits face soaring bills, the Government is ‘slapping £200 worth of levies and taxes on the price of energy’.
‘Reform is on the side of hard-up people, so we will completely scrap the heating tax,’ he said.
Mr Farage claimed Net Zero had ‘led to skyrocketing energy bills for working people’, adding: ‘Tax after tax has been added to bills without a second thought given to cost of living.’
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has vowed to cut £200 from the averge family’s energy bill by scrapping VAT and cutting green levies
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, said it was ‘outrageous’ that while Brits face soaring bills, the Government is ‘slapping £200 worth of levies and taxes’ on energy
Reform said its measures would be funded by a 7.5 per cent cut to the budgets of unprotected arm’s length bodies, known as quangos, which the party claimed would save £2.5billion per year in 2029/30.
Mr Jenrick said Homes England and energy regulator Ofgem were ‘out of control’, and said Reform would ‘trim’ them if in power.
At a press conference in London, Reform also launched an online competition at nigelcutmybills.com that will see the party pay voters’ energy bills for a year.
Mr Jenrick said: ‘If you give us your details on that website, in the next week or two, we’re going to draw one of those names, and Nigel is going to come to your house and he’s going to pay your energy bills and those of everyone who lives on your street for an entire year.
He added: ‘Reform can only cut the energy bills of one street in this country, but a Reform government will cut the energy bills of every single street in every part of our country.’
Mr Farage said the promise to cut VAT on energy bills was a ‘Brexit bonus’ as he argued Britain would not be able to take such action if it was still part of the EU.
Some experts have previously warned that cutting VAT on energy bills will merely result in a giveaway to richer homeowners.
They have argued that most of the benefit will go to people in larger houses with larger than average energy costs.
Tory shadow chancellor Mel Stride attacked ‘yet another fantasy promise’ from Reform.
‘Their policy of scrapping the carbon price support appears to be completely uncosted, while their VAT proposals would cost billions but they have no detail on how they would pay for it,’ he said.
‘Reform are simply not being honest with the public about their sums and have been saying openly that they are ‘not interested in the numbers’.
‘Meanwhile, the rest of their ideas seem to be copy and pasted from the Conservatives’ Cheap Power Plan announced last year.
‘Reform are a one man band, the only original thinking they seem capable of is to pile up ever more unfunded promises.’
Labour said ‘nobody should take Reform’s tax plans serious’ amid recent claims the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice had avoided nearly £600,000 in corporation tax through his property company.
Anna Turley, Labour’s chair, said: ‘Nobody should take Reform’s tax plans seriously until its deputy leader explains why he avoided paying nearly £600,000 in tax.
‘It’s a slap in the face to ordinary working people that Nigel Farage’s right-hand man has admitted avoiding tax which could cover VAT on energy bills for almost 7,500 households. Reform are not on your side.’
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said: ‘Nigel Farage cheered on Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran that is sending petrol prices and energy bills through the roof.
‘Now he says he wants to cut your energy bills. This is just Farage’s latest con. Just like Brexit, he peddles his lies then leaves the British people to pick up the tab.’
Mr Tice on Monday defended his tax arrangements, saying: ‘The idea that morally, we have got to pay the maximum tax we possibly can – therein lies the road to ruin for the UK as an economy.’
At Tuesday’s press conference, Mr Farage suggested the UK should heed US calls for assistance in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
‘When it comes to aiding the Americans in freeing the Strait of Hormuz, well, I think in many ways we ought to,’ he said.
‘I think it is in our national interest to keep the oil flowing, but we can’t. We haven’t got the assets.
‘So I think the first very big lesson that comes out of all of this is that we have denuded the Royal Navy and our forces to such an extent that, frankly, we’ve been humiliated on the world stage.
‘Our defence spending for next year is due to be just a fraction over 2 per cent and we’re going to have to find ways to significantly and rapidly up that budget.
‘To be fair, this is not all the fault of this Labour Government.
‘Fourteen years of Conservative government have run down our Armed Forces to a state, frankly, as I say, of total global embarrassment.’