Reform UK's alternative Budget, its 'teal paper', adds more than 60 measures it calls 'job-creating' to the £40bn package of cuts it set out earlier. Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, Reform's Treasury spokesman, are due to launch it in a speech in London today, PA reports via AOL.
Reform says it would bring in the measures in its first Budget and that they would cost the taxpayer nothing. They include abolishing the packaging tax known as Extended Producer Responsibility, removing the Public Sector Equality Duty and a five-year sunset on quangos.
The £40bn has been described in one report as welfare cuts. That is not what Reform's own breakdown shows. According to PA, £20bn comes from welfare. The rest comes from net zero subsidies, foreign aid, student loans, quangos and the civil service, plus £1bn raised from the immigration health surcharge. Reform still wants £18bn of the savings to go on raising the personal allowance to £15,000.
Ahead of the speech, Jenrick said: "Everything reported so far suggests this will be a 'mañana Budget', with John Healey dodging the tough decisions our country needs." He said Reform would "spend less, tax less, borrow less, and finally put the British people first."
Reform's claim that the measures cost nothing has not been independently checked. Its other figures are its own and have not been independently costed either.