In the unlikely event of Reform UK winning the next election and Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister, the party this month unveiled a proposal aimed to restrict almost all welfare benefits exclusively to British citizens to save an estimated £21 billion annually and this could hit expats in Spain and across the European Union.
The ban is designed to strip welfare access from foreign nationals living in the UK, including EU citizens who arrived before 2021 and hold settled status. Because this violates the Brexit withdrawal agreement, it would require intense renegotiations with Brussels.
Reform UK leadership has acknowledged that EU countries would likely respond by applying the same restrictions. This means British expats living in European countries like Spain, France, or Germany could be stripped of their rights to host-country social benefits, housing subsidies, and healthcare assistance.
For British expats currently living abroad who claim UK disability benefits, Reform UK suggests they would face two choices: return to the UK to continue receiving support, or rely on a negotiated framework where the UK might directly export those benefits under a strict new qualification scheme.
And shoudl that happen, the party said it had accounted for a potential £500m cost of British expats returning from the EU to the UK to claim benefits if the EU retaliates. Reform UK MP Danny Kruger told the BBC it is a “reasonable principle” that the country to which people are citizens of should be paying their welfare.
He said: “So I’d understand if the Europeans decided to apply the same principle that we are and to deny our nationals access to their welfare system and we will pay for that ourselves.” Asked what would happen to British people living abroad who claim a disability benefit, Kruger replied: “They would have two options – they can either return to the UK, they might wish to do that if the benefits system is preferable for them, but we’re open to a negotiation that it might mean that we could pay British disability benefits to them, if they qualify under our new scheme.”
However, under standard UK electoral law, British expats retain the right to vote in UK general elections indefinitely, meaning expats can vote for Reform UK candidates via postal or proxy voting in their last registered UK constituency – the big questio is would they vote for Reform UK if they would lose their benefits and face the choice of having to move back to a Farage-run UK?
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.” And the same could be said for Britons in Spain.