{"id":578617,"date":"2025-11-18T16:32:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/578617\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T16:32:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T16:32:14","slug":"reform-plans-to-strip-eu-citizens-of-benefit-rights-says-farage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/578617\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform plans to strip EU citizens of benefit rights, says Farage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Conservatives have also set out plans<\/a> to stop paying benefits to foreign nationals, although they have stopped short of blocking EU citizens from claiming.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a rival pre-Budget press conference, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Reform’s idea of reopening the Brexit deal was a “bad idea”.<\/p>\n

“We spent a lot of time negotiating those rights, not just for EU citizens in this country, but British citizens in other countries of the EU,” she said.<\/p>\n

Adding that a “lot of pain and effort” had gone into negotiating the withdrawal deal, she said it was “completely ridiculous” for Farage to suggest Reform would renegotiate the settlement.<\/p>\n

Labour chair Anna Turley also hit out at the plan, adding that it risked a “trade war with Europe” and “undoing” the government’s efforts to reduce trade frictions through a series of new deals with the EU. <\/p>\n

In a BBC interview following his news conference, Farage said: “All I’m arguing for here is fairness. There is now a vastly disproportionate number of EU nationals in Britain being paid benefits to Brits abroad.”<\/p>\n

He argued that the UK would be well-placed to renegotiate the Brexit deal because “we are still a crucial market for the European Union”, although he conceded “I’ve not pretended it would be easy”.<\/p>\n

Asked about the prospect of retaliation from the EU if talks failed, he replied: “We can retaliate with tariffs. Two can play that game.”<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to do that. But you need to have a renegotiation to get a fair reset with the European Union,” he added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Conservatives have also set out plans to stop paying benefits to foreign nationals, although they have stopped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-578617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}