A good stunt from the Tories, who this week published their alternative King’s Speech:
The whole package is framed around a £47 billion savings plan. Funded by welfare cuts and civil service reductions…
Read the main policy points below. Nada from Reform…
Stronger Economy
- Welfare Reform. Reinstate the two-child benefit cap, restrict PIP for lower-level mental health conditions, bring back face-to-face assessments, bar non-citizens from welfare and social housing, reform fit notes, and tighten the household benefit cap.
- Business Rates. Permanent 100% business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure, capped at £110,000 per business, benefiting 250,000 businesses. Costed at roughly £4bn a year.
- Repeal the Employment Rights Act 2025. Scrap virtually all of Labour’s employment legislation, reintroduce minimum service levels for strikes, restrict doctors from striking, ban council four-day weeks on full pay, and abolish paid facility time in the public sector.
- Scrap ESG reporting. Repeal a raft of corporate sustainability and climate disclosure regulations and refocus financial regulators on economic mandates only.
- Repeal the Climate Change Act. Axe the carbon tax, scrap the ZEV mandate, and establish emissions-offshoring monitoring.
- Cut energy bills by £200. Remove VAT on domestic energy for three years, abolish the carbon tax, scrap Great British Energy, end the Renewables Obligation and boiler tax, and streamline planning for nuclear.
- Get Britain Drilling. End the ban on new North Sea licences, repeal the Energy Profits Levy, remove the Net Zero mandate from the North Sea Authority, and reverse the Finch ruling on Scope 3 emissions.
Stronger Country
- Leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act. Restore parliamentary sovereignty over rights law, citing the Wolfson KC review that border control is only feasible outside the Convention.
- BORDERS plan. Ban asylum claims for illegal entrants, mandate deportation within a week, leave ECAT, abolish the Immigration Tribunal, end legal aid and most judicial review for immigration, and use visa sanctions against non-cooperating countries.
- Immigration cap and citizenship reform. Binding annual parliamentary cap on migration, double the ILR qualifying period to ten years, extend citizenship wait to five years after ILR, higher spousal visa thresholds, ban spousal visas for first cousins, and a 7% per-country cap on family visas.
- Take Back Our Streets. Triple stop and search, introduce “Immediate Justice” community sentences, crack down on cannabis, curb e-bikes and scooters, stamp out ghost plates, deploy 10,000 extra police, roll out Live Facial Recognition, and give police stronger powers over unauthorised traveller encampments.
- Sovereign Defence Fund. Repurpose the National Wealth Fund for defence, mobilise £17bn in public funding for drones, munitions and the defence industrial base, and push for 3% of GDP on defence this Parliament.
- Protect Veterans. Repeal Labour’s Remedial Order and NI Troubles Bill, restore conditional immunity for Troubles veterans, and ensure the law of armed conflict rather than the ECHR governs overseas operations.
- Restoring School Standards. Ban smartphones in schools, restore academy freedoms by repealing parts of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, zero-tolerance exclusion for knives and weapons, enforce political impartiality in classrooms, and ban under-16s from social media.
- Youth Opportunity. Abolish real interest rates on Plan 2 student loans, cap places on low-value degree courses, create 100,000 new apprenticeships for 18 to 21 year olds with a £5,000 employer incentive.
