Farage spending plans dismissed as 'fantasy promises' by Labour

Nigel Farage has been accused of leaving a multibillion-pound black hole at the heart of his party's spending plans after unveiling a series of expensive policy pledges to be paid for by cutting nonexistent items of government spending.

- Kiran Stacey

The Reform UK leader laid out a series of economic promises at a speech yesterday designed to take advantage of disquiet among Labour voters at the government's policies on taxes and benefits.

But while Farage promised up to £80bn worth of new spending, including scrapping the two-child benefit cap and increasing winter fuel payments - he did not explain exactly how they could be paid for.

Helen Miller, the deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: "The risk is that we hear much more about sizeable giveaways on tax and benefits while getting nothing like the same amount of specificity about the big cuts to spending on public services that would be needed for the plan to be implementable."

One of Farage's main revenue-raising policies is to scrap the government's commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, which he said would save the UK £45bn a year, citing calculations by the Institute for Government (IfG). But Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the IfG, said the Reform leader had used a figure that included both public sector and private sector investment.

"The bulk of spending on energy infrastructure is going to come from the private sector - but closing private sector projects won't generate money for the government," she said.