Reform UK to create super-department for business and economic
Nigel Farage named Richard Tice the party’s business, trade and energy spokesman last week.
Richard Tice will set out Reform UK’s plans to set up a business, trade and energy department that also covers housing in a speech on Tuesday.
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It comes after the Boston and Skegness MP said he would be tasked with creating a new “super department” to try to get growth up to 4%, as Nigel Farage named him the party’s business, trade and energy spokesman last week.
He will also outline plans to scrap a raft of “daft regulations” such as net zero commitments if Reform UK were voted into government.
He is expected to say: “This new Great Office of State covering Business, Trade & Energy – including housing – will be a joined up, comprehensive department including the British Sovereign Fund.
“Speed and action will be the order of the day. It will be a first for the UK and is the sort of coordinated, strategic, long-term structure that has served other entrepreneurial high-growth nations so well.”
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Mr Tice will set out plans to overhaul housing and planning and cut waste on “pointless projects”, as well as ditching current government policies, including its zero emission vehicle (Zev) mandate and flagship strengthening of employment rights.
“Let’s have a Great Repeal Bill that ditches daft regulations: scrap net zero, scrap Zev mandates, scrap new employment rights rules, scrap new property rental rules – all well intentioned but kill jobs, hinder growth, investment and prosperity.
“This will all help lower inflation and bring down bills for consumers,” he will say.
Instead, Reform UK would increase domestic oil and gas production and maximise the UK’s “energy treasure” both on and offshore.
Mr Tice will also call for heavy tariffs and tight quotas on Chinese cars as he pledges to class the automotive sector and certain others as “seismic industries” under a Reform UK trade policy.
He will speak of plans to create a new British sovereign wealth fund to back British companies and buy British products, comparing it to similar funds in Norway and Singapore.
A Labour Party spokesperson said Reform had “formally declared war” on workers.
“Nigel Farage and his cronies want to rip up hard-won workers’ rights on parental leave, sick pay, and would cut up to a million clean energy jobs in the process.
“Reform have revealed whose side they’re on – and it’s not working people. And it’s families up and down the country who’d be left paying a very heavy price.
“While Reform shout from the sidelines, this Labour Government is delivering the biggest uplift in workers’ rights in a generation, reducing the cost of energy bills for working families and delivering the stability businesses need to unlock economic growth across the UK.”