What clues do Robert Jenrick’s previous announcements give us about potential policy?
Robert Jenrick – the new Treasury spokesperson for Reform UK – would be Nigel Farage’s pick as chancellor, should his party ever win a majority in a general election.
In his more than 10 years in politics, Jenrick has served in Cabinet posts including housing secretary and immigration minister, and held the shadow justice brief before he jumped ship from the Tories to Reform. He was a junior minister in the Treasury in 2018-19.
With the next election still more than three years away his economic policies are yet to be formed, but he said on Tuesday he would put together “the most comprehensive plan of any political party” to “fix Britain’s broken economy” and reduce the welfare bill.
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But what can we learn about his attitudes towards fiscal and economic policies from his past arguments?
Tax and spend
Jenrick has generally been in favour of tax cuts, arguing – for example – that a reduction in welfare spending could allow for a cut in income tax.
But Jenrick, who held a junior Treasury role under Theresa May, has generally had an approach to tax changes that is more cautious than that of his new party, which has previously promised £90bn of tax cuts a year before having to row back on those proposals.
Last year, he said that the tax burden must be brought down “in a responsible way”, arguing that one levy that could be cut in order to boost the economy is stamp duty – the tax paid on the purchase of a new home.
He said that in her mini-Budget, Liz Truss had “abandoned fiscal responsibility” which meant “working people suffered as a result”. And he has previously criticised Reform proposals for cutting “£50bn a year from public services” as “not based in reality”.
Much like Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Jenrick has been a champion of economic growth. In August last year, he wrote a column arguing the importance of having a government that creates conditions for “entrepreneurs and investors to succeed” and underlining the need for the UK to be able to build infrastructure at a much faster rate.
This argument suggests that Jenrick would be in favour of scaling down regulations and laws holding up development and hampering the potential for economic growth.
Jenrick also warned, at the time, that the Conservatives needed to rebuild trust among parts of Britain it is no longer representing politically, acknowledging the need to invest money in deprived towns across the four nations.
Pensions and benefits
Jenrick recently appeared at odds with Farage over the future of the state pension triple lock – which sets the rate of annual pension rises at the higher of 2.5 per cent, wages growth or inflation. He told the Daily Express last month that he was in favour of keeping the policy in place because pensioners deserve “dignity and security”.
He noted pensioners cannot “just go out and do some more hours” to make ends meet and said that the triple lock had helped to protect their incomes into old age.
But, after initially offering mixed messages about its approach to welfare, Reform has said that it intends to slash the welfare bill. And Farage suggested in a recent interview that the future of the triple lock is up for debate – telling Bloomberg “everything is up for discussion” under his proposal to “cut … excessive welfare spending”.
The triple lock was introduced by the Tory-led coalition government and has seen the incomes of pensioners rise considerably in recent years due to high inflation. But the way the policy works means that its future cost to the taxpayer is wildly unpredictable, and is now expected to require three times as much money as previously thought.
Jenrick has also been an advocate for lower welfare spending, prior to becoming a Reform UK MP. When he was running to become the leader of the Conservatives against Kemi Badenoch, he said he wanted to cut benefits in order to then reduce income tax.
He also suggested tougher sanctions for people who do not take up job offers and said the sickness and disability benefit system was being “misuse[d]”, arguing for stricter eligibility particularly around mental health claims.
Immigration
As a former immigration minister, Jenrick has made no secret of his belief that the Tory government’s greatest failure was to do with its migration policies.
He eventually resigned from government because he believed the plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda would fail without a tougher approach to the courts and the European Convention on Human Rights – which Jenrick has argued the UK should pull out of.
Jenrick has been very critical about legal appeals getting in the way of government plans to deport people, arguing in his Tory conference speech that he would abolish migration tribunals and put more power over the judiciary back into the hands of politicians by allowing the government to handpick judges.
But it is not just illegal, or irregular, migration that Jenrick has been outspoken about. He has also reflected that allowing high levels of legal migration – to fill job vacancies following Brexit – was a mistake.
In government, there is often a tension between the Home Office which is under political pressure to reduce net migration and the Treasury which might see economic value in allowing more working-age people into the UK. But as chancellor Jenrick would be expected to have a hard-line position on migration.
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Public spending
Jenrick has long argued that public services – in particular the NHS – do not work at a level they should be given the amount of money funnelled into them.
He has argued that public sector productivity is lower than it was decades ago and the UK is at risk of falling behind competitors when it comes to investment in new sectors – arguing that embracing new technology, adopting a deregulatory approach and boosting devolution are all ways to speed up a sluggish state.
While Jenrick has argued that issues with the NHS are not about spending, but productivity, he has suggested more money should go into defence and prison-building.