Jenrick pledges to raise tax-free personal allowance to £15,000

Robert Jenrick, the newly appointed Chancellor, has pledged to raise the tax-free personal allowance from £12,570 to £15,000 if Reform UK secures a victory in the upcoming elections. Delivering his first budget speech, Jenrick emphasized that the proposed £21bn tax cut would demonstrate the party's commitment to prioritizing workers, stating, "There has never, in our lifetimes, been a worse time to be a worker in Britain."

Jenrick mentioned that the party would push to raise the personal allowance to £20,000 once the necessary funds are available, following their previous manifesto pledge. He highlighted that the proposal aims to alleviate welfare waste, foreign aid, and the pressures faced by migrants, instead focusing on supporting the British worker.

The tax cut is planned to be funded through a series of £80bn spending cuts, of which £52bn would be achieved via welfare reform. According to party officials, the tax increase would save the majority of taxpayers around £500 annually and benefit approximately 40 million people overall.

The personal allowance has been unchanged for five years at £12,570, under previous Conservative and Labour governments, as part of a strategy to generate substantial revenue. This long-standing freeze has led to what economists refer to as "fiscal drag," causing taxpayers to pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes as wages and prices rise over time without any adjustments to the tax brackets.