Reform UK is not yet committed to keeping the triple lock on pensions if it wins power, Nigel Farage has said, despite the party’s new Treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, saying he is a “supporter” of the policy.
Jenrick said he backed the triple lock, which raises pensions payments by the highest of inflation, earnings or 2.5 per cent.
“I’ve always been a supporter of the triple lock. It’s incredibly important to provide dignity and security to older people on fixed incomes in the last decades of their life, particularly at a time like this where there’s such challenging circumstances with the cost of living,” Jenrick said at a press conference in London on Wednesday, his first as the party’s Treasury spokesman.
Jenrick making his first speech as Reform UK’s Treasury spokesman
STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA
Shortly afterwards, Farage appeared to question whether the policy would form part of Reform’s election manifesto, saying it was still “open for debate”. The party leader has consistently refused to commit to keeping the pensions triple lock if he got into power.
When asked whether he had changed his mind, he replied: “No, I haven’t changed my mind. It’s open for debate. Everything is open for debate.”
The apparent split followed Jenrick’s announcement that a future Reform government would re-impose the two-child benefit cap and end mental health payments for people who did not have a clinical diagnosis.
Farage had previously supported scrapping the two-child benefit cap but said he had changed his mind after he was accused of being a socialist.
Jenrick said the party would oversee a clampdown on the welfare system to “defuse the benefits bomb set to bankrupt Britain”. He also announced that only British nationals would be able to claim benefits, while pledging to end “abuse” of the Motability scheme, which allows people with personal independence payments (Pip) to use their money to buy new cars to make it easier for them to find work.
Jenrick said he was determined to reintroduce “fiscal discipline” to the system. He said: “Our benefits system is broken. That is not fair and it is not right. It’s an economic and a moral disaster. That’s why I commit to you today, if we win the next election, Reform will defuse the benefits bomb set to bankrupt Britain.”
Department for Work and Pensions data showed 91,211 eligible Pip claims where the “main disabling condition” recorded was attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or attention deficit disorder in October 2025, the most recent figures available.
It was the highest figure recorded for the conditions since at least January 2019 and more than three times the 27,852 claims recorded in March 2020, when the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown was announced.
Jenrick also pledged to reform the Office for Budget Responsibility rather than abolish it, and said that the Bank of England would remain independent if he were in No 11.
Reform makes pledges on the independence of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England
He said that taxes were too high and would be brought down if there was the fiscal “headroom” to do so. However, he sought to distance himself from Liz Truss’s mini-budget, which took place when he was a minister.
Jenrick said that had been a “wild spending splurge alongside big tax cuts” as he emphasised that the need for fiscal discipline had been “sorely missing”.
Liz Truss during her tenure as prime minister
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
He said: “We want a simpler, fairer tax system that incentivises work, saving and investment. That means fixing the absurd marginal tax rates that many people face in our country today, so we do intend to review the tax code in a programme not seen since the landmark reforms of Nigel Lawson.
“We also understand that we can’t make tax cuts while running a huge deficit in the vain hope that the Laffer curve [a concept by the economist Arthur Laffer suggesting there is an optimal tax rate that can maximise government revenue] alone will do the hard work for us. That is why Nigel drew a line under the previous tax and spending commitments Reform had made.”
He added: “We will never make promises we can’t keep to the British people, so we’ll only cut taxes when we have generated the fiscal headroom necessary to make those tax cuts sustainable.”
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The party would also cut red tape and protect key national industries, including steel-making and car manufacturing.
Jenrick warned that China would undercut industries in Britain and cause job losses. He said: “Free trade with our friends and allies is advantageous, but we must respond robustly when our rivals consistently cheat the system and leverage dependencies to our disadvantage.
“Reform do not believe in picking winners, but, yes, we do believe in an industrial strategy to protect our strategic industries like steel, defence and car-making because unless we change course now, we will trade a car made in Sunderland for a car made in Shenzhen, the Chinese building their middle class on the backs of ours. And Reform will never allow that to happen.”
Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said Reform’s pledge to bring back the two-child benefit cap showed a “total disregard for the lives of young people”.
He said: “This is shameful from Reform, a total disregard for the lives of young people. I hope that they absolutely never get to be in power because this is an indication of the sort of Britain that they want to see, a Britain which plumbs its children back into poverty. I do not think that’s what this country needs and I don’t think it’s what this country deserves.”