Reform UK's Big Plan to Change Benefits: What You Need to Know
Reform UK will publish a 50-page plan on Monday promising to save £50bn by overhauling the benefits system. The party wants to change how Personal Independence Payment (Pip) works and bring in face-to-face assessments for people who have been claiming benefits for a long time.
Pip is a benefit paid to 3.7 million people in England and Wales who have long-term physical or mental health conditions. It is not based on how much you earn or have in savings, and you can claim it while working. It has two parts: one helps with everyday living costs, and the other helps with getting around. You can get one or both.
The plan is led by Reform UK's welfare spokesperson Jenrick. Under the proposals, people with less serious conditions would no longer get cash payments. Instead, local councils and mayors would provide things like transport and equipment directly. People who are gravely ill or severely disabled would get a new payment that is reviewed regularly.
Anyone who had not returned to work within two years would face a single, thorough in-person assessment to check their need and screen out fraudulent claims. Jenrick estimates that after these assessments, 2.16 million people would keep their full cash payment while 2.89 million would see it reduced or withdrawn. BBC News
The plan also proposes investing in talking therapies, physiotherapy and employment support to help people move off health-related benefits. A return-to-work insurance scheme would give employers a financial reason to bring back staff who have been off sick.
Reform UK has previously said it would cut the benefits bill by billions to help pay for the triple lock on state pensions. The triple lock is a promise that the state pension goes up each year by whichever is highest: inflation, average wages, or 2.5 per cent. The party's 2024 election manifesto pledged £50bn a year in savings across government, without saying exactly where from. It also said scrapping net zero policies would save £30bn a year. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has separately backed lifting the two-child benefit cap and offering more generous tax breaks for married people. BBC News
Jenrick said the Conservative Party's welfare plans were "paper thin" and that Reform UK's would save more than double the Conservatives' £23bn target. The Conservatives, led by Kemi Badenoch, have proposed £23bn of welfare savings by measures including restricting benefits to UK citizens and ending sickness benefits for less serious mental health conditions. In May, the Conservatives said they would change the benefit cap so Pip recipients would no longer be automatically exempt. Badenoch said her plans would stop people who abuse the system from getting almost unlimited payments.
The broader context here is that the welfare system is already changing. In March 2025, the UK government tried to tighten Pip assessments but backed down after Labour MPs complained. Some changes did go ahead, including halving the health-related part of Universal Credit (the main working-age benefit) for new claimants with less severe conditions. Government reforms starting in April 2026 are projected to save £1.9bn by the end of 2030/31, according to official figures. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent economics think tank, said the revised reforms would save only £2.5bn in 2029-30, costing the government £3.0bn compared to its earlier plans.
Jenrick described the government's March 2025 attempt as "modest savings" that were gutted by backbench MPs. Disability Minister Sir Stephen Timms published a report reviewing Pip and said the benefit was "not fit for purpose" and needs fundamental change.
A Labour spokeswoman said Reform's £50bn claim is "fantasy economics" built on taking support away from disabled people and pushing costs onto employers. She said Labour's own reforms deliver credible, independently-costed savings.
There is a historical comparison worth making. Iain Duncan Smith previously said a set of welfare changes would save the taxpayer £50bn by the end of that Parliament. That figure invites comparison with Reform UK's current pledge, though the party has not yet published the calculations behind Monday's plan.
Several questions will arise when the full document is published. Shifting responsibility for lower-level needs to local councils and mayors raises questions about how those councils would be funded. Social care provision varies across England's combined authorities. In Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, where welfare and social care are partly run by those nations' own governments, changes from Westminster would have limited reach. The return-to-work insurance scheme also shifts cost onto employers, which Labour has already criticised.
The proposal also goes into territory where the current government has struggled. The gap between Reform UK's £50bn headline and the IFS's estimate of £2.5bn in savings from the government's own reforms suggests the costings in Monday's plan will come under heavy scrutiny.
For those watching Westminster, the significance goes beyond the detail. Reform UK is placing its welfare policy to the right of both Labour and the Conservatives, proposing a more radical overhaul than either party. Whether the plan can survive the kind of scrutiny that sank the government's own, much smaller reforms in March 2025 is the question Monday's publication will have to answer.
