Reform accused of targeting the most vulnerable with £50bn benefit cut

Robert Jenrick takes aim at disabled people and foreign nationals after saying UK guilty of ‘suicidal empathy’

Reform UK has been accused of excluding the most vulnerable from society and punishing non-Britons living in the UK as it prepared to outline £50bn of cuts to benefits for disabled people and foreign nationals.

Robert Jenrick, Reform’s finance spokesperson, will detail the plans for £20bn of cuts to disability benefits overall, as well as another £21bn from stopping foreign nationals – including EU citizens with settled status – claiming almost any benefits, among other cuts.

The party said the plans were aimed at reducing the welfare bill by a quarter, with personal independence payments (Pip) replaced by another cash benefit that would be restricted to only the “gravely ill and severely challenged”.

It said “lower level conditions” would get support overseen by councils and mayors.

In relation to foreign nationals, the plans extend proposals set out by Nigel Farage last year in which he claimed that banning migrants from claiming some benefits and scrapping indefinite leave to remain would save £234bn over several decades.

Jenrick’s policy paper goes further by stopping foreign-born households claiming universal credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare, free school meals or disability benefits.

The paper says the change would save the taxpayer £21bn a year by the fifth year of the policy, and would also apply to those with EU settled status. However, foreign-born parents with British-born children would still be eligible for child benefit and free school meals.

Best for Britain, the pro-EU campaign group, said denying benefits to those with indefinite leave to remain would tear up Britain’s EU withdrawal agreement.

Tom Brufatto, the executive director of policy at the organisation, said: “Our polling shows that people do want to renegotiate our relationship with Europe, but by moving closer, not by damaging ties with vital allies and punishing our neighbours, colleagues and friends who have settled status here.”

Jenrick claimed paying benefits to non-British people was “plain immoral” – even though many would have paid into the tax system through working. He also wrote in the Telegraph over the weekend that the amount spent on disability benefits was “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”.

However, Jenrick was accused by campaigners of making life harder for disabled people and of not understanding that it would not save money.

Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP who led the campaign against previous disability benefit cuts under Keir Starmer, said: “When Pip helps people go to work, play a role in our society and simply live, threatening to remove Pip demonstrates that Reform do not want disabled people to play a full role in our society.

“Instead, Labour is working with disabled people through the Timms review to optimise the impact of Pip to ensure both taxpayers and disabled people get real value out of the system.

“Instead of making it harder for disabled people, who already experience significant financial deprivation, they should spend time learning of the benefit it brings.”

Linda Burnip, the co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said previous attempts to replace disability benefits with cheaper options had not been successful.

“Originally the Tories scrapped disability living allowance and replaced it with Pip, aiming to save 20% from the social security bill,” she said.

“However, this obviously has failed and the major problem with Reform’s crude plans to save money by denying payments to disabled people is that they fail to understand that a relatively small payment, which supports someone, could result in a massive saving overall from the public purse.

“It could, for example, mean someone with a mental health condition is able to remain living safely in the community rather than needing to spend weeks or even months in a hospital for which private firms often charge around £12,000 per person a week.”

Labour described the plans to cut disability benefits as “fantasy economics” that would “strip support” from disabled people and shift the costs of employing people with sickness or a disability on to employers through an insurance-based model.

Mothin Ali, the Green party deputy leader, said the “establishment parties are all trying to outdo each other when it comes to who can be the most xenophobic, who can punch down the hardest to the most vulnerable in our country, and who can cut the most support from disabled people”. He added: “It is cowardly to take from the most defenceless when we should be taxing the super-wealthy, including those who are in the privileged position of accepting £5m donations,” he added, referring to Farage, the leader of Reform UK.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives, who are trying to show they are taking a tough stance on welfare, said Reform’s announcement was “cobbled together” and claimed only the Tories had a “credible plan to save £23bn from welfare alongside our root and branch review of sickness benefits”.