Reform UK unveils £50bn welfare cut plan targeting disability benefits and foreign nationals

Reform's £50bn welfare cut plan

Reform UK will unveil plans on Monday to cut £50bn from the welfare bill, targeting disability benefits and entitlements for foreign nationals. Robert Jenrick, the party's Treasury spokesperson, will detail the proposals at a press conference on 17 August, having written in the Sunday Telegraph that the current benefits system amounts to "suicidal empathy" and a "strange perversion of compassion." The party said the plans would reduce the welfare bill by a quarter.

The centrepiece would abolish personal independence payments (Pip) and the health element of universal credit for working-age adults, affecting an estimated 2.89 million people who would see their disability benefits modified or withdrawn. Pip would be replaced by a "health security allowance" restricted to the most "severe, enduring and high-risk cases." Claimants with lower-level conditions would receive support through locally-administered "disability support accounts" overseen by councils and mayors, covering verifiable additional costs caused by disabilities. Reform said this would ensure the welfare system "does not encourage people to consider themselves disabled." Extra spending would be available for interventions such as physiotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy.

Cuts to foreign nationals' entitlements

A further £21bn a year would be saved by the fifth year by barring foreign nationals from claiming almost all forms of welfare, including universal credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker's allowance, child benefit, free childcare, free school meals and disability benefits. The ban would extend to EU citizens with settled status in the UK. Foreign-born parents with British-born children would remain eligible for child benefit and free school meals. Those who have lived and worked in the UK for 25 years would keep their state pension but lose access to all other benefits, though they could apply for British citizenship. Exemptions include the War Widows Pension and Armed Forces compensation.

Reform acknowledged the policy would require ministers to renegotiate the post-Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU, which protects the social security entitlements of those resident in the UK before Britain left the bloc. Best for Britain, a pro-EU campaign group, said denying benefits to those with indefinite leave to remain would tear up the withdrawal agreement.

Our polling shows that people do want to renegotiate our relationship with Europe, but by moving closer, not by damaging ties with vital allies and punishing our neighbours, colleagues and friends who have settled status here.

Political reactions

Jenrick said paying benefits to non-British people was "plain immoral" and argued that British taxpayers "cannot afford to subsidise everyone on the planet, especially those who have not paid in."

Forcing British workers to pay for the benefits of foreigners is not just economically illiterate but plain immoral.

The Conservatives dismissed the announcement as a distraction from questions about a £5mn gift Reform leader Nigel Farage received from crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne. Helen Whately, shadow welfare secretary, called it a "half-baked policy" and "another Reform attempt to distract from Farage's fishy £5mn and his embarrassing underperformance in his pointless by-election." A parliamentary standards investigation into Farage has resumed after he won a by-election last week in his constituency of Clacton, which all other political parties boycotted.

Labour described the plans as "fantasy economics" that shift costs onto employers, noting that employers could be mandated to fund return-to-work cover insurance for the first two years an employee is signed off sick. Labour has overtaken Reform UK in the polls for the first time in more than a year under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

Scale of the system

Reform said 6.9 million people received disability benefits in Britain in 2025, an increase of 2.5 million from 20 years ago, driven in part by rising mental health claims. The party said health and disability benefit spending is forecast to reach £110bn a year, or £3,600 per family, by 2031. Employers could also be mandated to fund return-to-work cover insurance for the first two years an employee is signed off sick, a proposal Labour said would shift costs onto businesses.