Nigel Farage has refused to commit to keeping the pensions triple lock in place if he wins the next election, even as he unveiled a series of expensive tax cuts without fully explaining how his party would pay for them.
The Reform UK leader said on Tuesday that if he became prime minister he might not keep the policy – which guarantees that the state pension rises by at least inflation, earnings or 2.5% a year, whichever is the highest.
Instead, his hard-right party is promising to overturn the two-child benefit cap and cuts to winter fuel allowance as it seeks to take advantage of unhappiness at the Labour government among voters.
Farage said: “The triple lock for pensioners is not something we have addressed as yet. We will, between now and the next election. We are, as you can see, building out our policy platform.”
His answer came after a half-hour speech in central London during which he outlined a series of policy promises designed to win leftwing voters disenfranchised by the Labour government’s benefit cuts.
They included a pledge to reverse the two-child benefit cap and to undo Labour’s cuts to the winter fuel allowance.
Both policies have caused political problems in recent weeks for Keir Starmer, who has promised to repeal some of the winter fuel allowance cuts and is understood to be considering eliminating the two-child benefit cap entirely.
Farage said: “We believe lifting the two-child cap is the best thing to do, not because we support a benefits culture but because we believe for lower-paid workers this actually makes having children just a little bit easier for them.”
after newsletter promotion
He also promised more generous tax breaks for married people should he win the next election, saying he would raise the amount of tax-free allowance that someone can transfer to their spouse from £1,260 to £5,000.
He said the policies were designed to boost families and encourage more people to have children, a social policy frequently espoused on the right.
He added that he wanted more stringent controls on abortion as well. “I think it’s ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous, that we can allow abortion up to 24 weeks, and yet, if a child is born prematurely at 22 weeks, your local hospital will move heaven and earth and probably succeed in that child surviving and going on and living a normal life,” he said.
The Reform leader said all this would be paid for by ending the government’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, cancelling diversity and inclusion schemes and stopping illegal migration by the end of the parliament.
The promises have led to accusations that Reform’s policy platform does not add up. Tim Montgomerie, a political commentator and Reform supporter, told the BBC: “I wouldn’t say the numbers do add up yet, I readily concede that.”
Farage accepted the proposed cuts might not add up to the same amount of extra money being promised by his party, but added that they gave “an idea of direction, policy, of priorities, of what we think is important, of what we think it is going to cost”.
