Richard Tice admits previous tax pledges were 'aspirational’ as Reform refuse to guarantee pensions triple lock
Reform’s manifesto had committed the party to tax cuts worth around a third of the NHS budget - but the party has rowed back their pledges
Richard Tice had admitted previous tax pledges were "a list of the time" and were "aspirational", as Nigel Farage says substantial tax cuts are "not realistic".
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Speaking to LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, Mr Tice admitted as part of the rowback, his party would not guarantee the triple lock on pensions.
The policy, which guarantees the state pension rises by the 2.5 per cent, the rate of inflation or at the rate of average wage growth, is estimated to cost the Exchequer billions in spending.
Mr Tice told Andrew: "On a number of occasions, Nigel has clearly said that we're not guaranteeing the triple lock. The nation's finances are in serious trouble and nothing's affordable.
"That's what we've said before and we continue to say that we can't guarantee it because we know the nation's finances are in a shocking state. We'd all love to be able to pay as much as possible. We can only know where we're at when we start to make major savings as we've talked about. But we're not guaranteeing the triple lock."
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As part of a wide-ranging interview on Reform's economic policy, Mr Tice was also grilled by Andrew Marr about a previous Reform UK pledge to raise the higher rate of income tax threshold to £70,000.
Mr Tice said they are focusing on "the aspiration" to make work pay for the lowest earners "by lifting the starting point of income tax from [£12,570] to £20,000."
"But to achieve that we've got to make the spending cuts by slashing net stupid zero. We can make substantial cuts and other changes," he added.
Andrew asked about other policies such as cutting fuel duty by 20 pence per litre and abolishing VAT on energy bills.
‘All those tax cuts have gone?'
— LBC (@LBC) November 3, 2025
‘It was a list for the time.’@AndrewMarr9 presses Reform’s Richard Tice over the party's U-turn on £90bn worth of tax cuts. pic.twitter.com/SSfiwh7k7P
Reform’s manifesto had committed the party to tax cuts worth around a third of the NHS budget, including raising the personal allowance to £20,000, introducing a £100,000 tax-free allowance for companies and exempting some high street firms from business rates.
At the time, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the plans, along with £50 billion of spending commitments and £150 billion of cuts, were “problematic” and cost far more than Reform claimed.
Speaking of the previous pledges, Mr Tice said: "That was a list for the time. Now we're in a completely different time."
He said that they were all "aspirational, good ideas", but added: "At the end of the day the finances of the country are in a terrible state. They're going to get worse.
"As Nigel talked about today, we're very worried about the bond markets. We've got to focus on cutting the wasteful spending, making work pay, making small businesses want to take more risk that will create growth."
Speaking at Banking Hall in the City of London on Monday, Nigel Farage said: “We want to cut taxes, of course we do, but we understand substantial tax cuts given the dire state of debt and our finances are not realistic at this current moment in time.
“There are some relatively modest things we would do: We would immediately remove IHT from family farms and from family-run businesses, and we will raise the thresholds at which people start to pay tax to begin the process of getting people out of the 16-hour a week working debt trap that so many people find themselves in.”
He added: “One of my own great frustrations is that Brexit has been squandered. The opportunity to sensibly deregulate, the opportunity to become competitive globally, all of that has been squandered.
“And the worst thing is that regulations and the way regulators behave with British business is now worse than it was at the time of the Brexit referendum vote.”
Labour said Mr Farage’s new proposals would “take us back to austerity”.
A party spokesperson said: “We’ve seen from the councils Reform run that they’ve failed to deliver the savings they already promised and are cutting services and raising taxes as a result.
“They’ve said themselves that those councils are a shop window for what a Reform government would do nationally – we know that this is more empty promises and no real plan.”