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Reform UK welfare cut plan faces feasibility questions by 2030
The plan targets more than £50 billion a year by 2030, but that would require cutting roughly 25% of non-state-pension welfare spending, according to BBC Verify.
Reform UK has outlined plans it says would save more than £50 billion a year from the UK welfare bill by 2030 if it forms the government, but analysis from BBC Verify suggests the scale of the cuts would be extremely ambitious.
BBC Verify notes the UK government is set to spend £353 billion on welfare benefits this year, with just under half going to the state pension that Reform says it will not cut. That leaves about £207 billion on other welfare spending, meaning a £50 billion cut would equal roughly 25% of the remaining total.
One proposed area is reforming health and disability support, including Personal Independence Payments, or PIP, a working age benefit. BBC Verify says PIP claimants have risen from around 2.4 million before the pandemic to four million this year in England and Wales, and that Reform links about £21 billion of its savings to changes that would reassess people in receipt of PIP over time.
BBC Verify also questions whether the promised savings from restricting benefits for foreign nationals can be delivered, citing Reform’s claim that around £20 billion could come from banning access to benefits including Universal Credit. The analysis says more than a million Universal Credit claimants were born overseas, including around 700,000 EU citizens who arrived in the UK before Brexit, and it adds that removing benefit rights could be complex and risky.