Reform UK proposes welfare ban for EU citizens with settled status
Reform UK has unveiled a welfare policy that would bar foreign nationals from almost the entire British benefits system, a move that explicitly includes European Union citizens holding settled status and would force a renegotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement. The party's economy spokesman, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals on Monday, framing them as a restoration of fairness to a system he said currently makes the British taxpayer "the welfare state for the world".
The ban would cover Universal Credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker's allowance, child benefit, free childcare and disability payments including Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Only a narrow set of exemptions would remain: war widows' pensions and Armed Forces compensation. Because settled status grants EU nationals an indefinite right to live, work and study in the UK after five years' continuous residence, excluding them from welfare would breach the citizens' rights provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement. That agreement, negotiated under the previous Conservative government, guarantees equal treatment with British nationals in social security. Reform acknowledges the conflict: its policy document states the Brexit deal "would need to be renegotiated".
The scale of the affected population is not trivial. Figures published in 2025 showed more than a million Universal Credit claimants were born overseas, of whom around 700,000 were EU citizens who arrived before Brexit and hold settled or pre-settled status. Reform projects that by 2029 roughly 1.5 million non-British adults would be claiming Universal Credit and 215,000 would be receiving PIP. The party says it has costed a potential £500 million for British expatriates returning from the EU if Brussels retaliates by stripping their welfare access.
Reform says it has spent six months drafting a 50-page plan that would save £50 billion a year in total, with £21 billion of that coming from the foreign nationals ban by its fifth year. The overall welfare bill for Great Britain this year is expected to reach £322 billion, or 10.6% of GDP, just over half of which goes to pensioners. Jenrick highlighted that one in six Universal Credit claimants is not a British or Irish citizen, arguing the money should instead "make the lives of British people better".
Labour counters that the "vast majority" of migrants have no access to benefits in any case, while the Conservatives dismissed the plans as "cobbled together". Neither the Office for Budget Responsibility nor the Institute for Fiscal Studies has independently modelled Reform's figures. The £21 billion saving assumes near-total exclusion of non-citizens from the benefits system, but does not appear to account for administrative costs of verifying citizenship status for every claim, legal challenges under the Withdrawal Agreement, or the economic impact of removing income from households that currently spend it in the UK economy.
The party also proposes replacing PIP entirely if it reaches office, though details were sparse. On Saturday Reform said it would scrap the disability payments system and introduce a new scheme; Jenrick's Monday speech did not elaborate on how the two announcements fit together.
The citizens' rights chapter of the Withdrawal Agreement is legally binding under international law. It guarantees that EU citizens lawfully resident in the UK before the end of the transition period, and UK nationals lawfully resident in an EU member state, enjoy equal treatment in social security, healthcare and access to benefits. The European Commission monitors implementation and can trigger dispute settlement, ultimately leading to arbitration and potential financial penalties or suspension of parts of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The European Commission's Brexit pages set out the EU's position on citizens' rights enforcement.
Danny Kruger, Reform MP for Devizes, acknowledged the reciprocity risk on BBC Breakfast. He said it was a "reasonable principle" that a person's country of citizenship should pay their welfare, and that he would understand if the EU applied the same rule to British nationals. Asked about British disability claimants living in the EU, Kruger offered two options: they could return to the UK, or the UK could negotiate to continue paying their disability benefits under a new UK scheme. The party's £500 million contingency for returning expats suggests it expects at least some to choose the first option.
There are an estimated 1.2 million British citizens living in the EU27, many of them retirees drawing UK state pensions and accessing healthcare via the S1 form. While pensions are generally exportable under bilateral social security coordination, disability benefits and means-tested support are not. A breakdown in coordination would create immediate hardship for a demographic that is older and less mobile than the EU citizens in the UK.
Beyond the citizenship ban, Reform proposes a "welfare to work" scheme requiring anyone who has claimed benefits for more than 12 months and is deemed fit to work to provide 20 hours a week of community labour. Local councils would organise the placements: cleaning high streets and parks, minor repairs, staffing libraries and community centres. Non-compliance or poor performance would trigger sanctions, including benefit cuts.
The party also wants businesses with more than five employees to pay a "return to work cover" insurance premium, funding the first two years of an employee's sickness absence. This is modelled on the Dutch system, where employers bear significant responsibility for reintegration. Reform says it would offset the cost by cutting employer National Insurance contributions. Jenrick insisted "nothing that we've outlined today will adversely affect businesses", though the Federation of Small Businesses and the CBI have not yet published analyses.
Labour said the plans would plunge the UK "back into years of Brexit renegotiations and stripping support from potentially millions of people who have lawfully lived, worked and paid taxes in Britain for years, and in many cases decades". Helen Whately, the Conservative shadow pensions secretary, argued voters want welfare spending controlled, abuse stamped out and dignity for the seriously disabled, not "disputes about Brexit". The Liberal Democrats pointed to NHS and social care reform as the real route to reducing the benefits bill. The Green Party called the policy "cowardly" and referenced the £5 million donation to Nigel Farage that is under investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog.
Reform's calculation appears electoral. The party polls strongly in areas with high foreign-born populations but low EU citizen voter registration. By framing welfare as a zero-sum competition between "British people" and "foreign nationals", it targets voters who feel the system is unfair without offering a detailed fiscal framework. The £50 billion total saving claim, roughly 15% of the entire welfare budget, would require cuts far beyond the foreign nationals ban, yet the party has not published a line-by-line breakdown.
Even if a Reform government were elected, the legislative path is steep. Primary legislation would be needed to amend the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act, the Welfare Reform Act and the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act. The Withdrawal Agreement would have to be renegotiated under Article 185, requiring unanimous approval from the EU27 and ratification by the European Parliament and UK Parliament. The EU has consistently refused to reopen citizens' rights, treating them as a settled guarantee.
Administratively, the Department for Work and Pensions would need to verify citizenship for every new and existing claimant. The Windrush scandal demonstrated the difficulty of proving lawful status decades after arrival. Settled status is digital-only; there is no physical document. A mass verification exercise would cost hundreds of millions and take years. Reform's policy document does not address transition arrangements for the 700,000 EU citizens currently on Universal Credit.
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