The Bulletin has submitted at least five requests for an interview regarding the party’s plans for the millions of expat voters over the past year. The requests have been recognised and agreed to but we are still awaiting for it to actually happen, perhaps the party’s latest announcement explains why.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party wants to exclude foreigners – including European Union (EU) citizens residing in the UK – from social benefits should it come to power, the party’s economic spokesperson, the former member of the Conservative Party Robert Jenrick, confirmed on Monday.
The proposal, unveiled by Jenrick at a press conference on Monday, would involve renegotiating the Brexit deal with the EU, which in turn would affect British expatriates living in the EU, as they too would lose equivalent rights under the principle of reciprocity.
Under the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU, EU nationals with permanent residence permits in the UK – known as ‘settled status’ – are entitled to these benefits on an equal footing with British citizens.
The plan unveiled by Jenrick – who left the Conservative Party in January to join Nigel Farage’s party – aims to save 21,000 million pounds (24,570 million euros) a year by the end of its fifth year of implementation, provided that this party wins the next UK general election, scheduled for 2029.
In response to this proposal, the Labour Party led by Prime Minister Andy Burnham has insisted that the “vast majority” of immigrants do not have access to these social benefits, whilst the Conservatives, led by Kemi Badenoch, have rejected the plans, deeming them ill-conceived.
Reform UK’s aim is to prevent foreign nationals from accessing benefits such as housing benefit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit for low-income families and disability benefits. “Forcing British workers to pay for benefits for foreign nationals is not only economic nonsense, but simply immoral,” argued Jenrick.
“People are more than willing to help their neighbours in difficult times, but the British taxpayer cannot afford to subsidise the whole world, especially those who have not contributed to the system,” he emphasised.
According to Jenrick, the average tax burden per family is set to reach 7,000 pounds (€8,190) a year by 2031 to fund social security benefits, the current annual cost of which to the country is estimated at around £322,000 million (€376,740 million) – equivalent to 10.6 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP).
This is the latest in a series of proposals put forward by Reform UK in recent months, almost all of which have focused on tackling immigration. Last week, Farage announced that he plans to send foreign nationals imprisoned in British jails to El Salvador if he comes to power, although the government of that country has not confirmed that it will enter into such negotiations with a party that is not in power.
Reform UK currently ranks second in the polls, behind Labour, having led the polls for over a year. In the local and regional elections last May, the party made spectacular gains, but now faces the difficult challenge of maintaining that popularity for the next three years.