A Reform UK government would deny most benefits to foreign nationals, the party has stated.
The prohibition, which is part of a proposed overhaul of Britain’s benefits system, would include EU residents with settled status in the UK, implying a renegotiation of the UK’s Brexit arrangement with the EU.
The British taxpayer is the welfare state for the world, the party’s economy spokesman Robert Jenrick said in a speech Monday. “‘That’s not fair, we all know that.
Reform says the idea will save £21bn a year by its fifth year but Labour says the “vast majority” of migrants have no access to benefits and the Conservatives have derided the plans as “cobbled together”.
Jenrick said the welfare system needed a change of attitude to “restore fairness”.
He stated one in six Universal Credit applicants are not a British or Irish citizen and recommended the money could be spent instead to “make the lives of British people better”.
The government will spend £322bn on welfare in Great Britain this year – or 10.6% of GDP – and just over half of that goes to retirees.
Reform says it has spent six months drafting together a 50-page proposal which it believes would save a total of £50bn a year.
Reform UK Welfare to Work Plans
Also in the plans is a “welfare to work” project, which Jenrick said will see those who had claimed benefits for longer than 12 months working 20 hours-a-week in local communities.
The MP added this will apply to anybody considered fit to work and will be organised by their local council.
The policy paper of reform proposed that those who do not participate or perform poorly will be sanctioned, with benefits possibly being cut.
They will work to clean up high streets and parks, to beautify neglected sites, to do small repairs to staff libraries and community centers, to do many more jobs from the list that we’ve released today.” Jenrick said:
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Jenrick refused to disclose how many people might lose access to benefits but said his party would treat individuals collecting benefits “with respect and dignity”.”Those who need them will continue to receive them under a Reform government. But those people who are shirking, who are taking advantage, they will be reassessed and they will be helped back into the workplace.””That’s the right and just thing to do.”
The party stated it will overhaul the disability payments system, Pip, if it entered Number 10 at the next election, on Saturday.
The current proposals would bar foreign nationals from practically all welfare payments, including housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare and disability benefits.
Only a few exceptions would apply, notably the war widows pension and Armed Forces compensation.
Reform says over 1.5 million adults who are not British nationals would receive Universal Credit and roughly 215,000 would receive Pip by 2029.
The party had previously promised to halt foreign nationals claiming Universal Credit.
This would affect EU nationals with settled status, who have an indefinite right to live, work and study in the UK, and have normally stayed in the UK for a continuous five-year period, thus the last Tory government’s Brexit deal would need to be renegotiated.
It means theoretically that British expatriates in the EU could lose equal rights.
Some 700,000 EU residents who came to the UK before Brexit and have the right to live and work in the UK were among more than a million UC applicants born overseas, figures published in 2025 showed.
Reform UK Benefits Policy and British Expats
The party said it had looked at a potential £500m cost of British expats returning from the EU to the UK to collect benefits, if the EU retaliated.
Reform UK MP Danny Kruger told BBC Breakfast it was a “reasonable principle” that the country of which people are citizens should be paying their assistance.
“So I would 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,” he said.
Asked what the fate would be for British people living abroad claiming a disability benefit, Kruger said: “They would have two options – they can either come back to the UK, they might want to do that if the benefits system is better for them, but we are open to a negotiation that it might mean that we could pay British disability benefits to them, if they qualify under our new scheme.”
Reform’s ideas also include requiring businesses with more than five staff members pay a “return to work cover” insurance to fund the expense of the first two years after an employee is signed off ill.
This is designed to stimulate employers to make adaptions and encourage individuals back to work, and reduce the number of people entering the disability benefit system, argues the party, patterned on the Dutch system.
Reform says it would reduce employer National Insurance contributions to meet the expense of this plan.
Asked about potential expenses for businesses Jenrick replied “nothing that we’ve outlined today will adversely affect businesses”.UK re-engages in Brexit dispute
UK Welfare Reform and Brexit Debate
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said: “Most of the expected savings here would come from a revised disability needs assessment which is designed to be substantially harder.But few details were provided about what the new evaluation would actually include or how they would avoid the experience of earlier attempts to toughen up the system which saw savings fall well short of government objectives.”
The think tank also noted Reform proposals to adopt a lower estimate of inflation when establishing benefit levels each year will save roughly £4.8bn in 2033-34.
Labour said the Reform plans would be “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, decades in many cases”.
The Tories’ shadow pensions secretary Helen Whately said the British people want to see welfare expenditure under control, abuse stamped out and dignity for individuals who are genuinely disabled, rather than debates about Brexit.
Lib Dems argued repairing the NHS and social care was the way to lower Britain’s benefits bill.
And the Greens claimed it was “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”.
That refers to the £5m gift paid to Reform leader Nigel Farage before he became an MP which is being reviewed by the parliamentary standards watchdog.