Reform UK Targets £50bn Welfare Cuts by 2030 as Analysts Doubt 25% Savings

3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Aug 17

£50bn a year in welfare savings by 2030 is Reform UK's target, with the plan hinging on cutting support for foreign nationals and overhauling disability benefits if the party enters government.
£21bn of those savings would come from health and disability changes, including reassessing 2.89 million PIP recipients over time and replacing some payments with a new Disability Needs Assessment while shielding the most severely disabled.
About £20bn more is tied to barring foreign nationals from benefits such as Universal Credit, but that would require reopening post-Brexit arrangements covering 4.5 million EU citizens in the UK and could trigger retaliation against roughly 1 million Britons in the EU.
BBC Verify said the scale is extremely ambitious because £50bn equals roughly 25% of the £207bn non-pension welfare budget, while the Institute for Fiscal Studies said Reform has provided relatively little detail and the savings are far from guaranteed.
Other proposed measures include using a less generous inflation gauge to save £4.8bn and tougher anti-fraud efforts worth £2.8bn, as Britain heads toward a broader welfare reform debate with Labour expected to set out its own plans later this year.