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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK will on Tuesday outline plans to save £25bn a year in an alternative Budget that seeks to balance Britain’s books by targeting EU citizens and aid to some of the poorest people in the world.
Farage says UK taxpayers can be spared the tax rises planned by chancellor Rachel Reeves in her Budget next week by implementing Reform plans that focus on cutting support to foreign nationals.
Labour claimed the Reform proposals would breach the UK’s post-Brexit deal with the EU and trigger a trade war, saying that would in turn push up food prices and the cost of living for Britons.
The policies proposed by the rightwing populist party include the removal of welfare benefits from EU citizens living in the UK, and a roughly 90 per cent cut to Britain’s overseas aid budget, leaving it at just £1bn per year.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, said politicians from other UK parties never admitted that “the only people ever asked to sacrifice are the British people themselves, while the state funnels ever larger sums to foreign nationals”.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said: “Britain has been turned into a global food bank, funded by taxpayers who can barely keep up with their own mortgages and energy bills. It is immoral, economically illiterate and politically indefensible. And it must end.”
Yusuf proposed ending universal credit for foreign nationals, in a move which would target EU citizens living in Britain with “settled status”, and is meant to save £6bn.
The standard “immigration health surcharge” of £1,035 a year would be more than doubled to £2,718.
Yusuf said the current charge amounts to a “62 per cent taxpayer-funded discount for foreign nationals to use the NHS”, adding his party’s move would save £5bn.
Reform would slash the foreign aid budget, which the Labour government has already reduced to pay for defence spending, by introducing an annual cap of £1bn. The proposal is meant to save £10bn.
The overall package is intended to save £25bn a year, or roughly the same amount that Reeves will need to find at her Budget to fill a hole in the public finances.
Labour said: “Nigel Farage’s fantasy numbers don’t add up, and he’d leave British taxpayers footing a hefty bill.
“Farage is happy to slap British shoppers with higher prices at the checkouts by risking a trade war with Europe. He’d betray working people and hammer British businesses who want to trade with the EU.”