𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is poised to announce a daring proposal on Tuesday, calling for a massive £25bn cut to the foreign aid budget. He argues that this move would allow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to address the public finance deficit without hiking taxes. The controversial plan also includes raising NHS fees for migrants.

Ms Reeves made a U-turn on her plans to increase income tax in her November 26 Budget last week, wary of the outcry that would follow from breaking Labour’s manifesto pledges.

Nevertheless, she is still anticipated to raise taxes next week through a combination of smaller adjustments and freezes to tax thresholds.

Reform urges cutting “unjust” payments to foreigners

Reform will propose that she instead cuts a series of “unfair” payments to foreigners, including the development budget, NHS surcharges and Universal Credit (UC) payments, as an alternative to tax increases.

Mr Farage and Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy, will advocate slashing the aid budget by a staggering 90 per cent, bringing it down to just £1bn. This drastic reduction would effectively wipe out nearly all bilateral aid programmes, while preserving some multilateral commitments to the UN and World Bank.

Reform estimates that the cut would raise £10bn – around half of the sum Ms Reeves is looking to find next week after an updated forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

Farage demands tripling migrant health surcharge

Mr Farage will also call for the immigration health surcharge, which is paid by migrants on short-term visas in the UK, to be almost tripled to £2,718.

However, Reform argues that the surcharge should be increased to the average annual cost of treatment for any person in England, which is significantly higher, and that migrants applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) status should pay it for the first time.

The party says that this policy would raise £5bn, and that further savings could be gleaned from its policies to reform disability payments, ban migrants from claiming UC and deport foreign-national offenders.

In a Telegraph article, Mr Yusuf slammed a “political class that insists British people tighten their belts, again and again, while they continue writing blank cheques to the rest of the world.”

Reform set to spotlight contentious foreign aid projects

Reform is also expected to highlight examples of foreign aid projects, including a £52m “road to nowhere” in Guyana, first revealed by The Telegraph in October, and more than £100m for family planning services in Pakistan.

The party’s proposals would effectively end the “unaffordable luxury” of direct aid payments by the UK to other countries.

It says the remaining £1bn would be used to “promote British interests abroad”, create a “flash fund for genuine disaster relief” and maintain commitments to the UN, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Starmer faced aid target cut criticism from Labour MPs and charities

Sir Keir Starmer faced a backlash from some Labour MPs and aid charities earlier this year, when he cut the previous aid target of 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent by 2027, to pay for an increase in the defence budget.

Mr Yusuf said he intended Reform’s intervention to be a genuine suggestion of policies that could be adopted by Ms Reeves.

“If [she] adopted these measures tomorrow, she could save or raise £25bn this year alone, enough to plug the fiscal black hole without hammering working families with yet more tax rises,” he said.

Reeves fine-tunes tax and spending plans ahead of Budget statement

As Reform prepares to announce its plan in a press conference on Tuesday morning, Ms Reeves is making adjustments to her tax and spending plans ahead of next Wednesday’s statement.

She has already ruled out increasing income tax rates, which her team had heavily implied would be necessary, after better-than-expected forecasts from the OBR last week.

The watchdog’s latest report suggests that Ms Reeves will be required to find £20bn over the next five years to break even at this year’s Budget, and more to maintain a larger cushion of “headroom”, which she hopes will reassure the bond markets.