Jenrick vows to partly undo Reeves’ £25bn NICs rise – for Britons

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick has said the party would undo Rachel Reeves’ £25bn tax rise on employers’ national insurance contributions – but only when employers hire British workers. 

Jenrick said Reform was set to put “British workers first, migrant workers second” by reforming tax to treat Britons differently to workers taken from overseas.” 

Reform’s Treasury spokesman said a new tapered levy would be applied on employers taking on migrant workers while Reeves’ tax hike on businesses in her first Budget would be reversed. 

He said the NICs cut for British workers would be funded by the new tax on hiring foreign workers and reduced welfare spending as fewer Britons would claim benefits.

In an address on Monday, Jenrick said: “The experiment of letting in millions of low-wage migrants — as millions of Brits languish on benefits — has failed catastrophically. Reform will end it.”

He added that if foreign workers were left unemployed, they should leave the country.  

In Reeves’ first Budget, the salary threshold for employer NICs was lowered to £5,000 while the tax rate was increased to 15 per cent from 13.8 per cent. The policy raised £25bn altogether.  Reform said it would reverse the rise in the tax rate but not the drop in the salary threshold, which was viewed by economists as the more damaging side of the tax cut.

The tax would be funded by a new levy on foreign workers, which would be graduated according to the number of people employed. The same NICs tax rate of 15 per cent would still apply to employers when foreign nationals are employed. 

Jenrick told journalists that the party would not provide a full assessment on the policy’s costs as there were up to three years until the next scheduled General Election. 

The latest tax cut announced by Reform follows a burst of announcements relating to economics policymaking. The party recently confirmed it would raise the VAT registration threshold from £90,000 to £150,000 in a bid to help small businesses, though the announcement has faced scrutiny over whether it can support growth. 

Reform’s announcements precede a crunch by-election in Makerfield on Thursday as Labour’s Andy Burnham looks set to beat the party’s candidate Robert Kenyon. 

Policies have also more closely addressed immigration, with Reform also proposing to scrap indefinite leave to remain for foreign nationals and to not allow visas for some migrant workers to be renewed.