Reform UK has pledged to cut more than £100bn from public spending within its first 100 days in government, as the party sharpened its attack on former chancellor Rachel Reeves and set out an aggressive programme of welfare and departmental cuts.
Robert Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, said the party would seek to reduce welfare spending by £50bn, make a further £20bn-£30bn of cuts across other government departments and reduce debt interest costs by £28bn.
The proposals were unveiled on the eve of Reform’s annual conference at the NEC in Birmingham, the first major party conference of the year, where senior figures are presenting their plans for government under the slogan “100 days of Reform”.
Jenrick criticised Reeves’s approach to the public finances, arguing that Reform would move more quickly to implement its fiscal programme.
“We won’t make the same mistake as Rachel Reeves,” he told reporters, referring to the former chancellor’s decision to delay holding her first Budget.
The £100bn-plus target represents one of the most ambitious attempts by a UK political party to reduce the size of government spending in such a short period.
Jenrick told the Telegraph that the proposals were intended to address what Reform sees as an unfair relationship between taxpayers and the benefits system.
“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.”
The welfare proposals would form the largest component of the party’s planned savings, with Jenrick arguing that reducing spending on benefits should be central to any attempt to stabilise the public finances.
The proposal to cut a further £20bn-£30bn from other departments would imply significant reductions across the wider state, although the party has yet to provide detailed departmental allocations for the programme.
Reform also claims it could reduce debt interest payments by £28bn, although achieving such savings would depend heavily on the trajectory of government borrowing costs and the credibility of any fiscal consolidation programme.
The plans come as the UK continues to face elevated borrowing costs, limiting the room available to any incoming government seeking to increase spending while maintaining investor confidence.
Reform’s conference is designed to demonstrate the party’s readiness for government, with its leadership arguing that the first 100 days would be used to deliver rapid changes rather than undertake a lengthy period of policy preparation.
Jenrick’s intervention also highlights the party’s intention to make public spending, welfare and the tax burden central to its pitch to voters, particularly those it regards as working households facing rising living costs.
The scale of the proposed cuts is likely to attract scrutiny over both their economic assumptions and their potential impact on public services.
Reform’s ability to deliver the savings would ultimately depend on the detail of its welfare reforms, departmental reductions and fiscal rules, as well as whether lower borrowing costs could in practice deliver the projected reduction in debt interest.
But the headline figure of more than £100bn in savings within 100 days provides a clear indication of the scale of the fiscal retrenchment the party would seek to pursue if it entered government.
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