Reform UK is promising to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000, if it wins the next general election. Robert Jenrick, Reform’s economic spokesman, will tell the party conference in Birmingham he will introduce the tax cut within the first 100 days of becoming chancellor. It is seen by Reform insiders as the flagship policy announcement of this conference and perhaps their biggest tax policy between now and the next general election. Reform estimates that increasing the threshold by £2,430 would save most taxpayers £500 a year and 2.9 million people would stop paying income tax altogether.
It says the policy would cost £17.7bn in the first year, rising to £21bn by the fifth year and could be paid for through £80bn of public spending cuts the party plans to make. “As chancellor, I will wake each morning with one purpose. To make Britain a better place to be a worker than it was the day before,” Jenrick is expected to say in his speech later on the final day of conference. He is expected to add: “1.3 million were dragged into paying tax last year alone.
Why? Because the tax-free allowance has been stuck at 12 and a half grand since 2021. And Labour has frozen it until 2031. “That betrayal costs a full-time worker on the minimum wage more than £750 a year.
And now for the first time, the freeze means they’re going to be taxing the state pension. What a disgrace.” In its manifesto before the general election in 2024, Reform said it wanted to lift the threshold to £20,000. Jenrick will tell conference activists this remains his long-term aim. Shortly after becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham told the Times that the “frustration” of people in his Makerfield constituency about the frozen allowance had “lodged in my mind”.
He later said that “all of this would be looked at” in the upcoming Budget but that any change would be “difficult given the financial circumstances.” Reform has said its spending cuts would include a £50bn reduction in welfare spending. Half of the £353bn of welfare spending goes on the state pension, but Reform has said it will not cut this proportion. Instead it wants to reduce the amount spent on disability benefits and removing some benefits from foreign nationals. The party also hopes to cut £10bn by scrapping net-zero programmes, £8bn by reducing the number of civil servants and £7.1bn by capping the foreign aid budget.
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