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Tax-free allowance pledge
Reform UK has pledged to raise the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000 within the first 100 days of a Reform government, with Robert Jenrick expected to tell the party conference in Birmingham that he will introduce the tax cut as chancellor.
“Reform estimates that increasing the threshold by £2,430 would save most taxpayers £500 a year”
The BBC said Reform estimates that increasing the threshold by £2,430 would save most taxpayers £500 a year and take 2.9 million people out of income tax altogether, while the policy would cost £17.7bn in the first year and rise to £21bn by the fifth year.
Jenrick’s speech is framed around the claim that “1.3 million were dragged into paying tax last year alone,” because “Labour has frozen it until 2031,” and he argues the freeze would mean “they’re going to be taxing the state pension.”
The Telegraph reported that the personal allowance is currently £12,750 and that Reform says its policy would stop three million people paying income tax altogether, with Jenrick saying the allowance has been stuck at £12,500 since 2021 and Labour frozen it until 2031.
Funding and spending cuts
Reform says the tax giveaway would be covered by £80bn of public spending cuts, with the BBC describing Reform’s plan to include a £50bn reduction in welfare spending and cuts tied to net-zero programmes, civil servants, and the foreign aid budget.
LBC said Jenrick told Matthew Wright that the tax changes would be funded in part by cuts to welfare spending, and it quoted a Reform party statement that the move would benefit 40 million people overall while ensuring the state pension remains untaxed.
In the Telegraph’s account, Jenrick said the party’s “hard choice” is the same as Andy Burnham’s, arguing it is “either welfare waste, foreign aid and migrants – or the British worker. We choose the worker.”
The BBC also reported that Jenrick said Reform would pay for the policy by “cutting out the waste,” and he told BBC Breakfast that the UK would “stop paying foreign aid to rich countries” while saying “we should be looking after British people first.”
Row over Reform finances
As Reform pushes the £15,000 pledge, London Now reported that the annual conference in Birmingham was likely to be overshadowed again by a row over a Channel 4 News report showing senior Reform figures discussing how to disguise donations from foreign sources.
“the annual conference is likely to be overshadowed again by the row over a report by Channel 4 News”
London Now said the footage was part of an investigation by undercover group Verbatim, which posed as an American donor and his son who had paid for polling allegedly commissioned by Reform and were seeking to channel money to Reform.
It added that Dan Jukes and James Orr stood down pending an internal investigation, and it quoted a Labour Party spokesperson saying: “Robert Jenrick only seems to be interested in making people better off when Reform UK are trying to distract from the latest scandal engulfing their party.”
The Telegraph, meanwhile, framed the tax-free allowance pledge as Reform’s attempt to ramp up preparations for government, noting that Reform led more than 300 consecutive opinion polls between April 2025 and last month, only for Labour to regain its average lead in Andy Burnham’s first few weeks.