Jenrick sets out Reform UK's £40bn spending cut plans

Robert Jenrick, Reform UK's Treasury spokesperson, has set out a package of spending cuts that he says would total £40 billion in the first year of a Reform government and £80 billion a year by the end of a parliament. He used a speech to list areas he would target, including Whitehall, welfare, foreign aid, net zero subsidies and what he called "worthless degrees".

Jenrick said the civil service is bigger now than when Tony Blair left office. "68,000 back office jobs, diversity teams, comms teams, HR teams, they all go, gone," he said. He also pointed to benefits for foreigners, net zero subsidies, aid, Whitehall and "worthless degrees", and said the savings added up to his headline figures: "40 billion pounds in year one. 80 billion a year by the end of the parliament."

The plans are opposition proposals, not government policy. They drew immediate scrutiny over whether the sums add up. The scale is significant: the proposals include taking £50 billion out of the welfare budget and cutting the benefits bill back to pre-COVID levels. That would carry huge consequences, including for people who are not British citizens and would not be entitled to benefits.

Jenrick's wider economic rescue plan includes 64 pro-growth measures, many of which do not involve spending. They include approving the Rosebank oil field and restarting oil and gas licensing. He also said Brexit had not removed all the EU regulations it was supposed to, and that he would get rid of the remaining ones.

The political context is testing. Reform is a strong presence in the polls, though support has slipped. Before a general election, opposition parties can expect access talks with the Treasury, where officials would test Jenrick's numbers. The speech also echoed the language used by Elon Musk and Donald Trump's administration about cutting civil servants, and Reform's earlier promise of a "Doge unit" to cut council spending. That local push ran into the difficulty that much council spending is mandatory, and the party has talked about the unit less since.

At the end of the speech, the question was less whether Jenrick had a list than whether the list would survive contact with the Treasury and the real world. The headline numbers are clear. The consequences are not.