By Legal Radar 
Record net migration figures, stretched public services, and persistent concerns over borders, defence readiness, and living costs dominated the 2024 general election debate. Reform UK positioned itself as the alternative to the two main parties with its document titled Our Contract with You. This reform manifesto sets out detailed proposals on immigration control, defence spending, tax and economic reform, policing, and constitutional change. This article provides an objective breakdown of the key policies, their stated rationales, costings, and potential implications for voters, researchers, and analysts.
The goal is clarity. Readers can assess the scale of the ambitions, the funding claims, and the practical hurdles without spin.
What Is the Reform Manifesto?
Reform UK launched Our Contract with You on 17 June 2024 as a 28-page policy platform rather than a traditional manifesto. Party leader Nigel Farage and colleagues framed it as a binding set of reforms for the first 100 days and beyond. It draws on advice from economists and think tanks and includes costings at the end of each section plus an overall funding summary.
Five core pledges sit at the centre:
- Freeze non-essential immigration to ease pressure on housing, wages, services, and social cohesion.
- End small-boat crossings through detention, deportation, and returns.
- Deliver zero NHS waiting lists while keeping care free at the point of use.
- Raise the income tax starting threshold to £20,000 so lower-paid workers keep more of their earnings.
- Scrap Net Zero targets and related levies to cut household energy bills.
The document covers immigration, government waste, personal and business taxation, the NHS, energy, policing, justice, education, benefits, Brexit, defence, housing, families, transport, agriculture, fisheries, pensions, social care, constitutional reform, and cultural issues. Party estimates put annualised costs around £140 billion and claim savings plus growth effects of roughly £150–160 billion.
Independent analysts, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies, questioned whether the savings figures were realistic and whether the tax cuts would deliver the projected growth without deeper service reductions.
Immigration Reform: The Centrepiece of the Contract
Immigration receives the most detailed treatment. Reform UK argues that high net migration has depressed wages in some sectors, intensified the housing shortage, lengthened NHS queues, and strained social cohesion. Official figures showed net migration running at hundreds of thousands annually in the years before the election.
Freeze on Non-Essential Immigration
The party proposes an immediate freeze on non-essential immigration. Essential skills, primarily in healthcare, would remain open. The aim is net-zero migration over time: arrivals matched by departures. Student visas would no longer allow dependents. Only students with essential skills could stay after study. Fake courses and visa abuse routes would face closure.
An employer immigration tax would raise National Insurance on foreign workers to 20 percent (compared with 13.8 percent for British workers). Health and social care staff and firms with five or fewer employees would be exempt. The party claims this could raise around £4 billion a year and encourage hiring of British workers while funding apprenticeships.
Stopping the Boats and Illegal Migration
A four-point plan targets small-boat crossings and illegal entry:
- Leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
- Ensure zero illegal immigrants are resettled in the UK.
- Create a new Department of Immigration to replace the Home Office functions.
- Pick up migrants from boats and return them to France.
Asylum claims from people arriving illegally from safe countries would be processed rapidly, offshore if necessary. Rejected claimants would be returned. Non-citizens would receive no legal aid for these claims. Foreign national offenders would face immediate deportation at the end of their sentence, with citizenship withdrawn for serious crimes (minor offences excepted). A five-year residency and employment requirement would apply before any access to benefits.
Party costings list immigration measures as generating £5–10 billion in annual savings, largely from reduced service pressures and the employer tax. Critics note that returns to France require cooperation that has proved difficult, offshore processing needs willing partner countries, and leaving the ECHR would place the UK alongside a very small group of nations. Deportation of foreign offenders is already policy in principle but faces practical obstacles with some origin countries.
These proposals form the most distinctive element of the reform manifesto and address long-standing public concerns over border control and British sovereignty.
Defence Spending and Armed Forces Priorities
Defence receives clear numerical targets. Reform UK commits to raising spending to 2.5 percent of GDP within three years and 3 percent within six years. At the time of the election, the UK trajectory sat lower. The party also pledges to recruit 30,000 additional full-time soldiers.
Further measures include:
- Upgrading the Office for Veterans’ Affairs into a full ministerial department.
- Investing in housing and equipment for serving personnel.
- Increasing basic pay across the forces.
- Free education opportunities for troops and veterans.
- An Armed Forces Justice Bill to protect service personnel on active duty from certain civil law and human rights challenges.
The document frames higher defence spending as essential for national security in a more unstable world and as a way to honour the military covenant. Costings place defence pledges at around £14 billion annually on an annualised basis. Supporters see the targets as restoring deterrence and readiness. Sceptics point to recruitment and retention challenges that money alone may not solve quickly, and to the opportunity cost against other spending priorities.
Economy, Tax, and Public Spending Plans
Economic policy combines large personal tax cuts, business reliefs, energy deregulation, and claimed savings from waste and policy reversals.
Personal Taxation
The income tax personal allowance would rise to £20,000, taking several million people out of tax and saving lower earners around £1,500 a year at the time of the proposal. The higher-rate threshold would move from roughly £50,000 to £70,000. Stamp duty would be abolished on properties below £750,000. Inheritance tax would no longer apply to estates below £2 million.
These changes form the largest single cost item, estimated at £70 billion a year. The party argues lower taxes on work and assets would boost growth, labour participation, and investment.
Business Taxation and Regulation
Corporation tax would fall immediately to 20 percent and then to 15 percent by year three. A £100,000 profit threshold would free many smaller firms from the tax. The VAT registration threshold would rise. Business rates on high-street small and medium enterprises would be abolished, funded partly by a 4 percent online delivery tax on large multinationals. IR35 rules would be scrapped. The overall aim is simpler, lower taxation to encourage domestic enterprise and high-street recovery.
Business tax measures carry an estimated £18 billion annual cost.
Energy, Net Zero, and Government Waste
Scrapping Net Zero targets and related subsidies is presented as a major saving of £30 billion a year. The party would prioritise domestic oil and gas production, nuclear, and end various green levies to cut household bills by hundreds of pounds. HS2 would be cancelled (claimed saving £25 billion in remaining costs). Foreign aid would be halved (£6 billion). Interest payments by the Bank of England on quantitative easing reserves held by commercial banks would stop (claimed £35 billion). Departments would be required to cut £5 in every £100 of spending without touching frontline services (£50 billion claimed). Benefits reform aims to move more than a million people into work (£15 billion claimed).
Overall, the party presents savings of around £150 billion plus modest extra growth tax revenues. Independent scrutiny has highlighted optimism in both the scale of achievable savings and the growth assumptions. Large tax cuts concentrated on higher earners and asset owners would change the distribution of the tax burden.
Policing, Justice, and Law and Order
Reform UK proposes zero-tolerance policing modelled partly on past New York approaches. It would recruit 40,000 additional police officers over five years, expand stop and search, and focus resources on street crime, drugs, and antisocial behaviour rather than non-crime hate incidents or online speech.
Drug dealing and trafficking would attract mandatory life sentences. Violent and acquisitive crime linked to drugs would face tougher custodial outcomes. Prison capacity would expand, including through rapid construction and arrangements for foreign national offenders to serve sentences abroad. Early release for serious offences would end.
Costings put policing and justice measures in the low single-digit billions. The policies respond to public anxiety about crime and visible disorder. Implementation would require sustained recruitment, training, and prison places.
Constitutional Reform and Broader Themes
The contract includes leaving the European Convention on Human Rights to restore parliamentary sovereignty over borders and deportation. The House of Lords would be replaced by a smaller, more democratic chamber. A referendum on proportional representation is proposed. The BBC licence fee would end. Schools would ban what the party terms transgender ideology (no social transitioning or pronoun policies for under-16s without parental involvement) and promote a more balanced patriotic curriculum. Critical race theory approaches would be restricted.
These measures sit under the banner of reclaiming British institutions and culture. They generate strong support among the party’s base and sharp opposition from those who see them as rolling back rights or international commitments.
Potential Implications and Critiques
Supporters view the reform manifesto as a coherent response to high migration, high taxes, energy costs, and perceived institutional capture. The combination of border control, tax relief for workers and small firms, higher defence spending, and tougher criminal justice addresses multiple voter priorities simultaneously.
Critics, including fiscal watchdogs, argue the arithmetic is optimistic. Achieving the claimed savings without frontline cuts would be difficult. Leaving the ECHR and forcing returns of small-boat arrivals face diplomatic and legal obstacles. Rapid NHS waiting-list elimination and large-scale police and army recruitment require workforce and infrastructure that take years to build. Growth effects from tax cuts are uncertain and historically mixed.
For UK voters the document clarifies the trade-offs. Lower taxes and higher defence spending require either higher growth, deeper savings elsewhere, or both. Strict immigration control aims to protect wages and services but could constrain labour supply in care and other sectors unless training expands quickly.
Political analysts note that the platform helped Reform UK secure a significant vote share and parliamentary seats in 2024, establishing it as a durable force on the right of British politics. Journalists and researchers continue to track which elements influence mainstream policy debate.
FAQs
What is the official name of the Reform UK 2024 document?
It is titled Our Contract with You and was published on 17 June 2024.
Does the reform manifesto freeze all immigration?
No. It freezes non-essential immigration while allowing essential skills, mainly healthcare.
How would Reform UK fund large tax cuts?
Through claimed savings from ending Net Zero subsidies, stopping Bank of England interest on QE reserves, departmental efficiency, halved foreign aid, benefits reform, and immigration-related measures, plus assumed higher growth.
What are the defence spending targets?
2.5 percent of GDP within three years and 3 percent within six years, plus 30,000 extra full-time soldiers.
Would Reform UK leave the ECHR?
Yes. Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights is a core part of the immigration and sovereignty proposals.
How does the party plan to stop small boats?
By leaving the ECHR, creating a dedicated immigration department, offshore processing where needed, and returning boats to France.
Are the costings independently verified?
No. The figures are the party’s own, based on external advice. Bodies such as the IFS have expressed scepticism about their feasibility.
You May Also Like: NC Window Tint Law Changes: Limits and Rules