Reform UK leadership contender Robert Jenrick has pledged to raise the tax-free personal allowance from £12,570 to £15,000 if the party wins power at the next general election.
Jenrick outlined the proposal in a speech to party members on Saturday, framing the £21bn tax cut as a central pillar of Reform’s economic mission.
He argued the move would demonstrate the party’s commitment to prioritising working people above other spending demands on the public purse.
“There has never, in our lifetimes, been a worse time to be a worker in Britain,” Jenrick told an audience of party members during the address.
“The hard choice for Burnham and for us is exactly the same. It’s either welfare waste, foreign aid and migrants or the British worker. We choose the worker.”
Jenrick added that Reform would push to raise the personal allowance further to £20,000 on a “step-by-step” basis, drawing on the party’s last manifesto commitment, once it could be fully funded.
The pledge would be financed through planned £80bn cuts to government spending, with £52bn of that figure expected to come from welfare reform alone.
Party officials say the tax cut would save the majority of taxpayers around £500 a year and benefit approximately 40 million people in total.
The personal allowance has remained frozen at £12,570 for five years under successive Conservative and Labour governments, a policy economists describe as creating “fiscal drag” as wages and prices rise without corresponding changes to tax thresholds.
Analysis by the Taxpayers’ Alliance indicates that around 500,000 more people will pay the basic rate of tax this year, while 410,000 more would fall into the higher 40 per cent tax bracket as a result of wage growth.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced she would extend the freeze until April 2031, despite suggesting during her first budget in 2024 that tax bands would eventually rise with inflation during the government’s five-year term.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham had previously hinted at a desire to unfreeze the personal allowance before stepping back from the idea, citing the significant cost to public finances.
The tax-free personal allowance is also subject to tapering for earners between £100,000 and £125,000, creating what is widely referred to as a “tax trap” for higher earners in that income band.