The EU could launch a trade war against the UK and would likely strip British expats of benefits in retaliation to Reform UK’s plan to ban foreign nationals from nearly all welfare payments, experts have said.
Nigel Farage was warned that Brussels would probably react with fury to his party’s plan to bar foreign nationals, including EU citizens with settled status, from claiming most benefits in the UK.
Reform has admitted its plan would probably mean British expats who lived in the EU prior to 2021 would similarly lose their benefits, as the policy would breach the Brexit withdrawal deal which guarantees equivalent rights across the border.
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Why average house price plunged by £7,360 in August
While a quieter market could create opportunities for buyers, for sellers it means pricing correctly and being realistic more than ever (Photo: Jason Alden/Getty)
Average house prices nosedived by more than £7,000 this month- marking the biggest August price fall since 2018, according to new figures.
Property site Rightmove said asking prices fell by 2 per cent, or £7,360 month-on-month.
Rightmove downgrades annual house price projections
While prices usually fall in August, this is a much bigger drop than the 10-year average of 1.3 per cent.
The figures prompted Rightmove to downgrade its annual house price forecast for 2026 from a 2 per cent increase to between 0 and a 2 per cent fall.
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What is influencing the figures?
The average asking price for a home in Britain stood at £364,999 in August – 1 per cent lower than a year ago.
And it’s all down to the supply.
The number of available homes for sale is at a 12-year high for this time of year.
This, combined with the quiet summer holiday period, has led to lower price expectations from sellers.
Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove, said the larger-than-usual price drop is a sign sellers are pricing much more competitively from the offset.
“Buyers have the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade, so standing out on price for the right reasons is hugely important,” she said.
A regional divide in property prices
But not everywhere is experiencing a dampening in property prices – as usual, there is a regional divide, Rightmove said.
Some buyers are putting purchases on pause (Yui Mok/PA Wire)
One third of renters are paying 50 per cent or more of their income on their rent (Photo: Christopher Furlong/ Getty)
In the North West of England, average asking prices are up by 1.9 per cent annually, beating out homes in London where prices have sunk by 3.1 per cent on average.
Burnham ‘mini bounce’
The depressed figures follow a “mini bounce” in buyer demand since Andy Burnham became PM.
Buying activity, however, remains roughly 10 per cent below 2025 levels due to the changing picture for mortgage rates, geopolitical uncertainty and October’s Budget spooking potential buyers.
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Everything you need to know about Reform’s welfare overhaul
Reform UK is preparing to unveil the biggest shake-up of the welfare system “in a generation”, with plans to abolish personal independence payments (PIP) for working-age adults and save an estimated £50bn a year.
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‘We will not pretend this is painless’
Nearly three million people would see their disability or sickness payments withdrawn or changed under the plans.
The party’s treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for The Sunday Telegraph, ahead of a full 50-page policy paper due on Monday. He has acknowledged the human cost directly, writing: “We will not pretend this is painless.”
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage (left) and Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)
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What is Reform proposing?
Reform would scrap PIP and the health element of universal credit for working-age adults. Both would be replaced with a new “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.
Only claimants with “severe, enduring and high-risk” conditions would qualify for that cash support.
Everyone else currently receiving disability-related payments would lose their cash entitlement altogether.
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A closer look at the detail
Those who would lose access to payments would instead be supported through council-run disability support accounts.
An activist holds a placard during a protest over benefits cuts organised by People’s Assembly on June 7, 2025 in London, England. Activists as well as some Labour MPs have objected to the government’s proposed benefits cuts, including tightened criteria for personal independence payments (Pip) for people with disabilities. (Photo by Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)
Photographer: Alishia Abodunde
Provider: Getty Images
Source: Getty Images Europe
The Government faced backlash for proposing to cut personal independence payments last summer (Photo: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Reform estimates that 2.16 million would keep their present cash entitlement in full, while 2.89 million would see theirs modified or withdrawn.
Child payments impacted
This week, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have both strongly hinted they will lift the two-child benefit limit (Photo: Danny Lawson/PA)
The party plans to extend the same approach to children’s benefits, aligning the system for anxiety, depression and ADHD with the adult changes, though only for new claimants.
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Plans modelled on Dutch system
Reform would also place a new obligation on businesses with more than five staff to take out “return to work cover” insurance, which would pay for the cost of an employee’s first two years off sick, rather than the state covering that cost through benefits.
The scheme is modelled on the Dutch system, where Reform argues disability benefit applications fell by 40 per cent after similar reforms were introduced.
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Experts say the world is at a key cross-roads in malaria control and eradication (Photo: James Gathany/CDC via AP)
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Scientists hail malaria breakthrough – what we know
A new compound has been hailed “an exciting step forward” in the fight against malaria – which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Researchers at the University of Dundee, who discovered the compound, say it has the potential to simplify dosing regimens for the treatment and prevention of the illness.
A ‘novel drug-like molecule’
The new compound, called cabamiquine, is described as a “novel drug-like molecule” that can be delivered in a single dose.
The advances in a vaccine against malaria was one of 2023’s most promising breakthroughs (Photo: Getty Images)
The world should learn the lessons of Covid to fast-track vaccines for deadly diseases like malaria, according to Professor Adrian Hill (Photo: AFP)
An early-stage clinical trial showed that when administered with a commonly used antimalarial drug called pyronaridine, it is both effective and has a favourable safety profile in adults and adolescents.
Larger trials on the horizon
The team said the findings support the development of the combination therapy for larger trials and children.
In 2024, there were an estimated 282 million cases of malaria and 610,000 deaths from the disease worldwide. Figures have been rising in part due to resistance to common malaria medicines.
Caption: FILE PHOTO: A doctor tests a child for malaria at the Ithani-Asheri Hospital in Arusha, Tanzania, May 11, 2016. REUTERS/Katy Migiro/File Photo
Photographer: Katy Migiro
Provider: REUTERS
Source: X04265
Recurring malaria is the most common type of malaria outside Sub-Saharan Africa. (NABILA EL HADAD/AFP/Getty Images)
An ‘exciting step forward’
This is an exciting step forward for a compound which has great potential to simplify dosing regimens for malaria, a disease which causes hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We are delighted to see how the compound… is progressing into a potential malaria medicine.
Dr Beatriz Baragana, a member of the Dundee University team that discovered cabamiquine
Amina Dawd, 36, strokes one of her resting children’s hair as two of her other children sleep under the protective bednets. The children sleeping without the net will still gain some protection from the repellant properties of the bednet. The Long Lasting Insecticide Nets (LLIN) help to repell bugs and prevent malaria, the country’s biggest killer disease. (Photo by Louise Gubb/Corbis via Getty Images)
But Farage was warned that under the terms of Brexit, the EU could also launch economic retaliation, for example by suspending parts of the trade deal between the two sides including putting up tariffs that would hit British businesses and the economy.
Reform announced the plan to bar foreign nationals in Britain from claiming most benefits, saying it would save £21bn a year as part of an overall package to save £50bn from the welfare bill.
The ban would cover EU nationals who arrived in the UK before 2021 and have settled status, which would require a tricky renegotiation of the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Reform admitted this could mean British expats who lived in the EU prior to 2021 losing their equivalent right to claim benefits in their host European country.
But the new proposals cover almost all welfare payments including housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare and disability benefits.
Foreign nationals in the UK would continue to receive the state pension if they qualify.
Mandy Thody, 61, lives with her mother Andria, 85, in Ourense, northern Spain, and worries that a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement could force them to return to the UK.
Her mother has access to health and social care support from the Spanish state, including panic alarms and transport to hospital, which Mandy called “absolutely wonderful”.
She said: “They’ve arranged for us to borrow things, sent social workers round, they call us every time the alarm goes off, 24 hours a day.”
Andria has not lived in the UK since 1975, and Mandy thinks it would be “ridiculous” if a change to the post-Brexit deal meant she had to return now.
“I can’t believe that any government could do that to an 85-year-old woman,” she said.
Reform has set aside £500m of contingency funding to cover the potential cost of British citizens returning to the UK to claim benefits if their entitlement to welfare in the EU is withdrawn.
The cash would cover around 10 per cent – around 130,000 – of the 1.3 million British citizens living in the EU returning home to claim benefits.
But Reform was warned that the overall cost might be higher as the EU could ultimately be entitled to suspend parts of the UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement, which guarantees zero-tariff trade, if the withdrawal agreement is broken under so-called “cross-retaliation” clauses in the process for resolving Brexit-related disputes.
Anand Menon, director of the UK In A Changing Europe think-tank, told The i Paper: “The proposals would breach the terms of the withdrawal agreement and the EU will doubtless retaliate, whether that be by making life harder for Brits in the EU or by triggering retaliatory trade measures.
“Either way, it will impact severely on UK-EU relations.”
Reform Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick insisted the ban was necessary because “forcing British workers to pay for the benefits of foreigners is not just economically illiterate but plain immoral”.
“People are more than happy to support their neighbours in hard times, but the British taxpayer cannot afford to subsidise everyone on the planet, especially those who have not paid in,” he said.
Jenrick has already set out proposals to transform sickness and disability benefits with the aim of saving £22bn from the welfare bill and he will make further announcements on Monday.
A Labour spokesman said: “These plans would mean ripping up the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU, plunging the UK back into years of Brexit renegotiations and stripping support from potentially millions of people who have lawfully lived, worked and paid taxes in Britain for years, and in many cases decades.
“That includes people with settled status who are part of our communities, raising families, working and contributing to our economy.”
The spokesman said the “vast majority” of migrants had no access to benefits and the Labour Government was already reforming the welfare system.