Reform UK has unveiled its plans to evict foreign nationals from social housing with a pledge to end the rewards for claiming welfare.
Earlier today, the party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, set out the pledge to overhaul the UK’s social housing system by prioritising British-born citizens over foreigners, echoing Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy from the 80s.
As Nigel Farage eyes up the “biggest shake-up of social housing for a generation”, British-born workers under the age of 35 will be “placed at the front of the queue”, including married couples with children.
The party confirmed priority will also be given to veterans, and social housing will be prioritised for British nationals who are in work, on the view that social housing should “not be a reward for welfare”.
Mr Tice set out the proposals earlier today, which could become a reality in just a few years’ time if Nigel Farage won the keys to No10 at the next election.
Reform UK plans to offer council house tenants a 30 per cent discount on their home after five years of residence, while residents who had lived in their home for 10 years would be handed a 40 per cent discount.
Meanwhile, since coming to power more than two years ago, Labour has attempted to pull apart the same Right to Buy scheme that is designed to support young people clamber onto the housing ladder.
Speaking in Westminster, Mr Tice said: “Our ambition is to stop the rot. We need to turn it around.
Speaking in Westminster, Mr Tice said: ‘Our ambition is to stop the rot. We need to turn it around’
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“And so from a construction point of view, a Reform Government will build an extra 50,000 affordable social homes every year for a decade.”
Hitting out at Labour’s pledge to build more homes, the Boston and Skegness MP said: “They’re missing all their targets by a country mile and the Labour Party, supposedly looking after workers, is actually doing exactly the opposite.
“They’re literally withdrawing from a Right to Buy programme. They’re making it so restrictive, almost nobody will buy it.”
Speaking on the Right to Buy scheme in the past, Mr Tice added: “It was a great success in the 80s and 90s, but the mistake was not building more.
Lee Anderson introduced Richard Tice earlier today
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“This plan is about building over a decade, another 500,000 affordable social homes. It’s the right thing to do.”
Reform UK has also committed itself to evicting foreign nationals from social housing entirely, pledging to oust them from the taxpayer-funded accommodation within three months of Mr Farage entering No10.
The pledge is expected to free up hundreds of thousands of social homes, with estimations of 540,000 social homes currently taken up by foreign nationals.
Backing up the plans, Lee Anderson, Reform UK’s chairman, said: “People who live in subsidised housing – paid for, subsidised by the hard-working British taxpayer – what is wrong with expecting them to keep their house to a reasonable standard?”
He said: “We see it on the new house builds now where up to 10 per cent are given to housing associations and it is a big problem for me in my community.
“When they don’t allocate these houses on a sensitive let, we see all sorts of people moving into these houses and creating mayhem and disturbances on these brand new housing estates.
“The hard-working British taxpayer, the alarm clock people who get up at five or six o’clock in the morning, go to work and they see the house next door with four foot of weeds, dustbin not been emptied for three weeks, and a waft of weed coming out the window – it’s not acceptable.
“They expect their taxes to go to decent people who are prepared to get up in the morning.”