Robert Jenrick: Reform will be careful with your money - speech in full

I read this morning a commentator say they thought I'd been put into this job as Reform's Shadow Chancellor due to my experience around the Cabinet Table.

They thought that my experience, seeing up close how Government works - and invariably doesn't work - would shape my approach.

And there is truth in that.

But the bigger influence on me came from a different table, the one in the kitchen in the home where I grew up, in 1980s Wolverhampton.

My Dad, Bill, was not born into a life of privilege.

A Manchester lad, he moved to the Black Country to take a job in a foundry.

He'd left school at 16, went to night school, and got some qualifications.

Around our kitchen table he set up a business, starting with just a white van.

It wasn't always easy; running a business never is.

But through sheer grit, he built up that business and set up his own factory.

In time, he was able to build a more comfortable life for my Mum, my sister, and me than he'd ever had.

In building his own business, he provided hundreds of people with good jobs. Secure jobs.

The kind that offered families peace of mind. The chance to get on in life.

But for too many people right now, those same opportunities are fading.

Victims of a 30-year-long economic consensus which has failed…

… and mismanagement by a Westminster class who bet that because Britain was a rich and powerful country, it always would be.

They were wrong. In 1997, our people's living standards were closing the gap with America.

Today, incomes are closer to Romania's than the US.

And why is that?

They spent money we didn't have, more than doubling our debt and increasing taxes to record levels.

They failed to reform a public sector where productivity has barely risen in 30 years.

They blindly pursued Net Zero, driving industrial electricity prices to the highest level in the developed world, and killing British manufacturing in the process.

They eviscerated the tax base. Today we have just 80,000 companies with a turnover of over £5m; a quarter fewer per capita than the United States.

The recent succession of Prime Ministers in my old party and now in Labour, lacked the vision for what we could do to arrest our decline.

Defeatist.

Each in turn, defeated.

The financial crash should have been a wake up call - the warning to address the structural weaknesses in our economy.

The economic shock of Covid might have been another.

They were both missed.

It now falls to Reform to fix Britain with a new economic model.

Now at this stage, I understand that you will be wary of false prophets.

Many prospective chancellors have offered their diagnoses of the problems our country is facing.

They've even alighted on some of the remedies in speeches much like this one.

Before the election, Rachel Reeves pledged financial stability and investment.

She said she would unleash the potential of British workers.

To a weary public it sounded promising. The reality?

Instead of offering stability, she's unleashed chaos.

Benefit cuts in, benefit cuts out.

Inheritance tax up, inheritance tax down.

Almost every possible tax rise on a business or worker floated in the pages of a newspaper for months on end - with devastating impact on business confidence.

A cabinet now at war, and a Prime Minister on the brink.

The promised investment boom? Driven overseas with punitive measures against investors, which in the case of the non-dom changes could see the country actually lose money.

Any juice left in businesses squeezed out by tens of billions in tax rises to pay for an exploding benefits bill.

And what about those workers who Reeves promised to champion ? Taxed more and, like Britain, poorer.

Prices, rising.

Unemployment up because of her destructive tax on jobs, especially among the young.

Everyone is feeling hard up.

An economy no longer serving working people - held hostage by a trade union orthodoxy that we thought we'd banished decades ago.

As one of Keir Starmer's own cabinet ministers, Wes Streeting, said to his friend Peter Mandelson: “there's no growth strategy at all”.

The British people have been betrayed once again.

They voted for change, but instead got more decline.

They feel cheated, and have every right to be.

What Britain needs is to change course, and forge a new political economy.

What Britain needs is Reform.

Today I am here to explain Reform's approach to the economy.

It's not flashy. Some of it's rather technical.

So I don't think we need fireworks and the smoke machine on this occasion, Nigel.

But it's important.

Firstly, Reform believes in fiscal responsibility.

We believe Britain's rising debt must be brought under control.

Why? Because right now, one pound in every thirteen you pay in tax is spent just on the interest on the country's debt.

It means we spend more on servicing debt than we do on our schools and defence… combined.

This year the cost of borrowing reached the highest level since 2008, far above the level at the so-called mini budget.

Now… Andy Burnham recently said the Government shouldn't be in hock to the bond markets and should ignore this flashing red light.

I say the opposite. If you need to borrow money to fund your spending, then you need to convince the lender you have the wherewithal to repay it.

I say the bond markets force the government to face up to trade offs. Reform respects and welcomes that.

Successive governments have made, changed and broken their fiscal rules.

They've created what some have coined an “idiot premium”, where lenders simply do not trust the UK's word.

That's costing taxpayers money, so it must end.

Reform will prepare strict fiscal rules, taking the advice of market participants in the period to come.

We will instil a fiscal discipline that has been sorely missing, spending only what we can afford and never saddling future generations with the bill for our profligacy.

So the first thing a Reform Government will do is bring Britain back from the brink of a debt crisis by cutting wasteful spending. The root of many of our problems is that successive Governments have taken more and more of people and businesses' money – and wasted it.

They've sprayed it around, with no regard for how hard they worked for it or their priorities.

They say your money is needed for the NHS, our armed forces, the police. Those in need. But, more and more often now, it's not going to them. It's going to those who don't need it or shouldn't be getting it. Council houses for migrants. Foreign aid to rich countries. Billions in welfare for foreign citizens.

Expensive new cars for those with anxiety. Colossal payouts to fat cat executives of utility companies that have increased – not cut – people's energy and water bills. Reform will get rid of this endemic waste.

The work to do this is already well underway.

In the past few months, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice, both highly accomplished businessmen who know how to balance books and create jobs, have set out how we will begin to cut wasteful spending.

Reform will make £25 billion in annual savings through measures including ending universal credit for foreign nationals, raising the Immigration Health Surcharge and capping foreign aid at £1bn.

Because under a Reform Government, the interests of the British people will always come first.

Additionally, Danny Kruger's plan to streamline the civil service will generate £4 billion in immediate savings from averted salary costs, plus £1 billion in averted pension liabilities for future taxpayers.

Reform will be careful with taxpayer's money. Your money. Because that is what it is.

Cut Welfare Spending

And being careful with your money means tackling our exploding welfare bill.

In 2010, the Conservatives undertook commendable reforms to our welfare system.

But, as time went on, they let it spiral out of control. And it's worse under Labour.

Now, Reform will always protect the vulnerable. And those who've worked hard but fallen on tough times.

But on current course, one in eight people are set to claim disability benefits in four years' time — that's almost nine million people. The number claiming disability benefits for an attention disorder has more than doubled since Covid. We all know a significant number of these claims are spurious.

And that we're just giving up on over half a million young people, discarded as ‘unfit to work.' So our benefits system is broken. That's not fair... Not right… It's an economic and a moral disaster. That's why I commit to you today, if we win the next election: Reform will defuse the benefits bomb set to bankrupt Britain.

We are developing the most comprehensive plan for welfare reform in British politics, which we will set out in the months ahead.

We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression, and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead encourage them into the dignity of work.

We will reinstate in-person assessments and require clinical diagnoses to weed out those who are choosing a life on benefits.

We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can't afford those cars themselves.

And we'll make sure only British nationals can claim benefits in the first place.

But we need to go further. Because, at the moment, the system is not fair to those who pay for it.

As a signal of intent, today, Reform is changing our policy on the two-child cap for Universal Credit.

The policy was well-meaning.

We want to help working families have more children. But right now, we just cannot afford to do so with welfare. So it has to go.

And, as Reform's Shadow Chancellor, I'm ending it. A Reform Government will restore the cap in full.

We are the party of alarm clock Britain — a party for workers and not welfare.

Give business stability

And because we're confident about the approach we will take, we're happy to have our homework marked.

Everything Reform promise will be fully costed.

Accordingly, we will retain the Office for Budget Responsibility.

It is far from perfect; the Times recently ranked its performance near the bottom amongst UK economic forecasters.

But the impetus for its creation was a desire to instill fiscal rectitude, and that is something we wholeheartedly endorse.

So rather than abolish it, we will reform it.

The OBR have consistently overestimated the short-term benefits of migration and downplayed its long-term costs.

They have underestimated the dynamic effect of cutting taxes.

So, we will break up this cosy consensus and ensure it has diversity of opinion.

And we'll run competitions for superforecasters to join the body and pay competitive salaries to those who most accurately model the impact of Treasury decisions.

And we take a similar approach to the Bank of England.

Under Reform, the Bank of England will remain independent.

The Bank has served our country for over 300 years and has been a model for central banks the world over.

But the Bank must perform better.

Its core mission is simple. Keep bills down. And yet for 52 of the last 56 months inflation has sat stubbornly over its target of 2%.

Now, that's not all the Bank's fault. Furlough played a part. As too has excessive public pay settlements.

But the Bank has taken it's eye off the ball.

So we will strip the Bank of distractions which have been loaded onto it. That includes the requirement for the Bank to help the transition to Net Zero.

The Bank must be a more open institution, and the private sector represented better on the Monetary Policy Committee.

But the fact the Bank will remain independent will never stop Reform from holding them to account if they make mistakes. Like the excessive Quantitative Easing after the financial crisis and during Covid.

Reform's interest will always be keeping inflation low because that is how we will keep people's bills down.

Reform will cut taxes responsibly

But it's not just stubborn inflation that's leaving working people poorer.

The state is taking more of their money than ever before.

Reform believes the tax burden is far too high… and that cutting it is a crucial part of generating economic growth.

We see the value in doing so wholesale, where tax disincentivises work and investment.

And in a targeted manner to spur investment in the growth sectors of the future, like the biotech industry.

We've already set out how we will save businesses like pubs and farms from taxes that make their business model impossible.

We want a simpler, fairer tax system that incentivises work, saving and investment.

That means fixing the absurd marginal tax rates many face today.

So we intend to review the tax code in a programme not seen since the landmark reforms of Nigel Lawson.

But we also understand that we can't make tax cuts while running a huge deficit in the vain hope that the Laffer curve alone will do the hard work for us.

That is why Nigel drew a line under the previous tax and spend commitments Reform had made.

Because as he said in his Banking Hall speech, “given the dire state of debt and our finances” under Rachel Reeves, previous assumptions are no longer realistic.

And we will not make promises we cannot keep.

So we will only cut taxes when we have generated the fiscal headroom necessary to make tax cuts sustainable.

And to those who question our approach, I say this.

We have seen what happens when this economic rule is ignored and fiscal discipline is thrown out the window.

Liz Truss went down the path of wild spending splurges alongside big tax cuts. The result was chaos. Mortgage payments soared... Working people suffered…

Today, I give you my word that a Reform Government will never play fast and loose with your savings.

Let Businesses grow

And with the sure foundation of that fiscal stability, we will get the economy growing by backing businesses.

We know that it's businesses - not the Government - that are the engine room of our country's wealth.

And unlike this Labour cabinet, Reform has people who have founded, run and grown businesses…

We actually want businesses to succeed.

Because when they succeed, they create well paid jobs and careers.

So people can, perhaps, buy a better car for their family or a bigger house. So they can take a holiday, or a second one. So they can have a meal out with the family once in a while without worrying.

I want everyone to be that bit better off.

And I also want them to be able to get on, to thrive – not just to keep their heads above the water.

There should be no shame in success.

Reform believes doing well in life is never something to be embarrassed about.

So Reform will unashamedly champion British businesses.

Of all sizes.

Big businesses, yes, but also small businesses like my Dad's.

And most importantly of all, new businesses.

The risk-takers inventing things, solving problems, and getting ahead.

A Reform Government will leave you to run your business and to innovate. Rather than forcing the lanyard class to run it for you. They do not understand innovation and only stymie it.

That means no more mandates for HR or judges setting wages.

It means a return to meritocracy and the pursuit of excellence - so no more diversity targets on company boards.

We will scrap red tape, and take every effort to make life easier, no matter how small, from allowing shops to open late to allowing cafes and bars to offer outdoor seating without endless form-filling for officialdom.

We will make Britain the easiest place to open a bank account and reform bankruptcy laws to be a country of second and third chances for those willing to take risks.

But it's not just about an overbearing Government getting out of the way.

It's also about Government doing its job properly, and that begins by giving businesses confidence to operate.

Unlike the other parties, Reform understands that international investors hold deep concerns about sectarianism, crime and infringements on freedom of speech…

Because we share them!

Only Reform has the courage to tackle these threats to our way of life and standing in the world.

Tackling crime is not normally part of economic policy, but Reform will treat it as such.

We will ruthlessly pursue the scammers, shoplifters and tool thieves that make the lives of businesspeople a misery.

Under a Reform Government, their era of impunity is over.

It's time we had the backs of people who work hard and do the right thing.

Now I'm here speaking to you in the City, 40 years since the Big Bang put London on course to be the world's most important financial centre.

But today, the London Stock Exchange is struggling.

Last year, £2.1bn was raised in IPOs on the market. In the US, the equivalent figure was £36bn, 18 times more.

It is no coincidence that as the LSE was dropping, the FCA was enjoying a boom in staff numbers and budget.

Recent reforms have clearly not been anything like commensurate with the scale of the challenge our capital markets face. They haven't created the investment culture our economy needs.

Reform will rein in the bureaucratic overreach. And as Nigel has said before, we'll make London a global centre for cryptoassets and digital finance.

To compete with the U.S. and others will require genuine creativity and incentives, not tinkering. A totally different offer that capitalises on the unique strengths of London. That's what we will set out to do, working with the City to develop those plans.

I had my first break in the City, as of course did Nigel as a trader.

We know Britain needs a thriving financial services sector and its relative weakness has hit our productivity. Reform will work with you to bring about a second Big Bang.

And we will seize the opportunities for better, nimbler regulation that Brexit offers.

In financial services, yes, but also in data protection, environmental standards, and labour rights.

We will find the edges we can to deliver British businesses advantages and higher living standards for the British people.

Get Britain Building

This spirit of deregulation — of doing less and doing it better — is perhaps most needed in planning.

Right now Government is actively stopping companies from building new offices, factories, data centres, or labs that would create well-paid jobs.

And it is holding young people back from owning their own home and starting their own family.

It's so broken that the last time house prices were this expensive relative to wages was in 1876.

It's leaving everyone worse off.

So Reform will liberate planning across city centres and industrial zones… making immediate national priorities the densification of Inner East London and the building out of Cambridge.

We will repeal ridiculous EU nutrient-neutrality rules that are preventing the construction of over 100,000 homes for British families.

And we'll go further.

We will create a permitted development right for research labs and data centres, streamline permission for factories in our towns.

But we're not content with stopping there.

We will make sure that businesses have the grid connections they need to invest in AI, robotics, and manufacturing.

And we will pass legislation to deliver the crucial infrastructure projects that have been bogged down for too long.

If this Government continues to fail, that means passing emergency legislation to build a third runway at Heathrow if the project isn't ready to go when we take office.

After May's local elections it will be clear that Reform is the only truly national party and we take that seriously.

Our responsibility is to create opportunities in all parts of our country, not just London.

Faced with the trade-offs, a Reform Government will back the transport projects with the biggest benefits for working people.

That means productivity boosting, value for money projects like bypasses, flyovers, roundabouts, buses and local rail. And yes, improving the state of our roads.

We will build the links between towns, villages and suburbs that allow people and goods to move, rather than attempt to drive motorists off the roads and into absurd 15-minute cities.

Rest assured, under Reform the war on the motorist will end.

Cheap energy

A precondition for turning around the economy is understanding that cheap energy is the driver of prosperity.

So a Reform government will bring forward measures to cut your bills.

That's lower energy bills for people, and lower energy bills for businesses.

That requires a fundamentally different energy policy.

When Westminster got swept away with net zero fanaticism, Richard Tice was a lonely voice of common sense.

He saw through the fictional claim of hundreds of thousands of new green jobs.

And that is why you can trust Reform to scrap the impossible targets that are driving energy costs through the roof…

and the farce of paying vast amounts of cash for intermittent and unreliable energy delivered at the wrong times.

As Richard Tice has announced, we will make full use of the gold buried in the North Sea to keep the lights on and bring in revenue.

And we will rapidly scale Britain's nuclear fleet to provide new, cost-effective and reliable sources of power, including by implementing the Fingleton review of nuclear regulation in full.

The result of these policies will be to help cut energy prices, creating the conditions for Britain to reindustrialise, restore our proud industrial heritage and create good jobs for British workers once again.

Ending mass migration:

And above all Reform will change the country's economic strategy, so it serves you, the British people.

So, alongside the fiscal and regulatory reforms I have outlined, we will build a more resilient workforce. That will mean radically changing not just the scale of immigration but also the makeup of those coming here.

As Zia Yusuf has already set out, Reform will ensure that any new arrival is a net contributor to our economy.

We want the tens of thousands of the talented Brits, who have emigrated in search of better opportunities and lower taxes, to come home and contribute to our country. And they will under Reform.

We will also make foreign investors welcome in Britain again with a Britannia investor visa ready to undo the economic self harm done in recent years.

But in return we will demand businesses invest in Britain's workforce, rather than hiring from overseas.

This will be a big change to our economic model and will go hand in hand with welfare reform. So businesses should begin preparing now.

Because there is no alternative.

We must make our country more productive, better off and more united.

Globalisation

This new political economy also requires recognising that the world has fundamentally changed – and that, in turn, our trade posture must change as well.

Last month, the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, argued that globalisation had been weaponised by larger powers, becoming a source of weakness for dependent countries.

One line stuck out to me. He said “You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

We agree.

Yes, free trade with our friends and allies is advantageous. But we must respond robustly when our rivals consistently cheat the system and leverage dependencies to our disadvantage.

A Government led by Nigel Farage will never display the weakness Keir Starmer has towards China.

We will never ignore the interplay between economics and security as some in the Conservative Party wish to do.

They are invariably the same politicians who, for instance, left our country with enough munitions to last just eight days in war and little domestic capacity to manufacture more.

Now… Reform don't believe in picking winners.

But, yes, we do believe in an industrial strategy to protect our strategic industries, such as steel, defence and carmaking. Because, unless we change course now, we will replace cars built in Sunderland with cars built in Shenzhen. The Chinese… building their middle class on the backs of ours.

We believe in levelling the playing field so British businesses can succeed. We will not sit back if British businesses are cheated. Or our critical industries are allowed to go extinct.

And similarly will must have a clear-eyed strategy for the technologies of the future like AI.

We have an economy that is almost uniquely reliant on the services sector just as it faces unprecedented disruption.

But right now there is no plan to respond to this and benefit from AI - only to create a small number of jobs regulating it.

If we continue this Government's indifference, we will fall behind.

But if we handle the incoming technological revolution nimbly, we can succeed just as we did in previous industrial revolutions.

It's a generational challenge, which will be met head on by Reform.

Conclusion

Today, I have set out the foundations of Reform's economic plan.

You will be hearing plenty more from Nigel, Richard, and me in the coming weeks and months.

This speech has barely scratched the surface of our ambitions, for deregulation, for combatting waste in Government spending, for radically improving productivity in the NHS while keeping it free at the point of use.

For how we will cut people's bills and leave more money in workers' pockets at the end of the week.

There is a great deal of work to do. The list of challenges is vast.

No-one in Reform is pretending that this will be easy.

The task of changing course after 30 years of failed policies is daunting.

It requires deftness, care and plenty of planning.

We will be in the words of Disraeli, conservative to preserve all that is good; radical to remove all that is bad.

Admittedly, Disraeli was not a very successful Chancellor, it has to be said.

My inspiration is another Robert, also from the outskirts of the Black Country. Robert Peel.

The architect of the Victorian age of stability and prosperity. He was, as we will be, a reassuring revolutionary.

If we get it right, we will see the benefits in real, immediate “catch-up” economic growth with more jobs, higher wages and lower bills.

Reducing the cost of energy will help to rebalance the economy. Fixing planning will lift productivity across the country. Cutting migration and reforming welfare will help draw people into work. Lowering the tax burden will restore the incentives to invest and build businesses.

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Rab Butler once described politics as the art of the possible. But right now, it seems we have collectively convinced ourselves that progress is impossible.

That the decline we all see today is inevitable.

Well, Reform has the drive to defeat that defeatism.

The energy to lift the gloom.

And the courage to take action where others have flinched, to get Britain back to its best.

Britain's economy is broken. Though, be in no doubt, it can be fixed.

We can turn our country around.

But it can only be done with Reform.