September has been an extremely busy month for the party, with our annual conference in Birmingham, a number of key policy announcements, and the high-level defection from the Conservatives of Danny Kruger, MP for East Wiltshire and Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions.
Mr Kruger is widely regarded in Westminster as a considered and thoughtful MP, and a true conservative. His defection to Reform UK is significant – and I am sure will not be the last. In his defection press conference, Mr Kruger said, ‘The Conservative Party is over. Over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left. The best hope we have, maybe our last hope, is Nigel Farage.’ In a subsequent interview, he made a salient point that I think is worth highlighting – ‘The British public wants radical change.’
The electorate’s tolerance for failure on immigration, welfare, crime and taxation, to name a few, has completely run out. Half measures and more empty rhetoric simply will not cut it in today’s political climate.
With that in mind, this month saw Reform UK announce a series of bold policies termed ‘Prioritising UK Citizens’. The two headline policies within this were the ending of Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and its replacement with a five year renewable work visa, and the second is a cessation of all benefit and welfare entitlements for non-UK citizens (EEA nationals will initially be exempt under the EU withdrawal agreement, but this would be renegotiated by a Reform UK government).
These measures are, in large part, borne out of an urgent fiscal need to reverse what is referred to as the Boris Wave, describing the broader immigration policy of the Conservative Party between 2020 and 24, which saw unprecedented levels of mass immigration into the UK, principally by low-skilled migrants and their dependents from non-EU countries.
Reform UK estimates 800,000 of those who entered will soon be able to apply for ILR and gain access to the UK’s benefits system, creating a looming fiscal crisis. The current direct cost to the taxpayer of benefits paid to foreign nationals is already £12 billion every year. This is why it is absolutely imperative that the Boris Wave is reversed. As Nigel Farage said, ‘It is simply not fair to ask the British taxpayer to go out to work every day to pay for the benefits of foreign nationals, many of whom are not even working.’
Importantly, we are also proposing major changes to address the long-term issues around the UK’s reliance on foreign labour. A Reform UK government will introduce an Acute Skills Shortage Visa (ASSV). This will be strictly time-limited, with a finite cap at the start of each year. Any company sponsoring a worker via this route will have to pay an equivalent levy to fund the training of a British worker in that role, allowing us to build long-term capacity for British workers and end our reliance on foreign labour. For far too long, British workers have had to compete with a virtually unlimited amount of foreign labour, effectively making the minimum wage the maximum wage in many sectors. Ending our reliance on low-skilled foreign labour and unleashing the huge potential of the very large number of British people who are currently not working is a generational opportunity, one Reform UK fully intends to realise.
Thomas Gargrave
Reform UK Dorset
