Robert Jenrick has announced plans to cut public spending by more than £100billion across Reform’s first 100 days in power, as he took aim at Rachel Reeves.
The party’s treasury spokesman revealed the proposals ahead of the party’s annual conference at Birmingham’s NEC, pledging to deliver an emergency Budget swiftly after any election victory.
Mr Jenrick said he would cut £50billion from welfare, slash another £20-30billion from other departments and reduce debt interest by £28billion.
Speaking to reporters on the eve of the party’s conference at the NEC in Birmingham, the Newark MP said: “We won’t make the same mistake as Rachel Reeves”, a reference to the former Chancellor’s delay in holding her first Budget.
Reform UK is the first party to hold its conference this year, prominently featuring the slogan “100 days of Reform”, with senior party members setting out their plan for power, should they form a majority government.
Mr Jenrick told The Telegraph: “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.
“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.”
Mr Jenrick also turned his fire on Prime Minister Andy Burnham, mocking his early pledge not to be “in hock to the bond market” as a claim that had “aged like milk” just six weeks into his premiership.
Writing in City AM, he noted that ten-year gilt yields had climbed to their highest point since the financial crisis, while thirty-year yields reached levels not witnessed since 1998.
He attributed the market turbulence to persistently elevated inflation and ballooning government borrowing, pointing out that OBR forecasts for 2028-29 had more than doubled from £39.4bn to £86bn since Labour entered office.
“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,” Mr Jenrick said.
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Reform UK is not alone in targeting the welfare bill.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has also accused Burnham’s government of being “addicted to welfare”, calling for sweeping cuts to benefits spending.
She told a press conference: “Whether it is Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves or Andy Burnham, the instinct is always the same spend more, tax more, borrow more.
“We Conservatives believe in something different. We believe in fiscal responsibility. We believe in improving living standards, and we believe in simplifying and removing taxes that distort the economy and kill growth.
Under the Conservative proposals, Mrs Badenoch’s party plans to save at least £4bn through reforms to housing benefit, plus an extra £3.1bn by reimposing the two-child benefit cap
The party also wants to stop the £1bn annual increase in the British Business Bank’s industrial strategy capital plus a pledge to save £1bn by ending VAT exemptions for Motability vehicles.
Responding to the Conservatives, a Labour spokesman: “Dodgy Tory economics won’t fund Britain’s defences. The British people won’t forget Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives hollowed out our armed forces and blew holes in the UK’s proud international reputation.
“This proposal uses the same money they’ve already spent on other things and appears to break the Tories’ so-called golden economic rule.
“This is just days after Kemi Badenoch promoted a key architect of the Liz Truss mini-Budget as her shadow chancellor. It’s the same old Tories. they haven’t listened and they haven’t learned.”
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