Farage skips Budget following 'physical altercation' with MP

Robert Jenrick is Reform UK's Treasury Spokesperson and MP for Newark. Thank you very much indeed for coming on the programme, Mr Jenrick. Do you support the £100 payments for people's energy bills? Good afternoon. Hi, good afternoon. Well, it's very, very little for most people. I mean, I don't want to just hand out £100. I want to actually cut people's energy bills for the long term. And that's why we at Reform have said that by getting rid of the net zero nonsense, by taking the green levies and taxes off people's energy bills that have been ladled on by successive Tory and Labour governments, we can actually bring down those bills, not for one winter or two winters, but permanently. That's the difference. And we've estimated that this would be enough to take £250 at least off your energy bill this year, next year and forever. Well, the government have already started doing that, of course. They've taken some of those net zero levies off people's bills and put it into taxation. So where would you put those levies? Well, some of them we'll get rid of altogether because you know there's no point just moving something from people's energy bills to general taxation someone's got to pay for it in the end that's the fantasy of what the Labour government are proposing they're treating us like fools they're saying with one breath we want cheap energy and with the next breath uh John Healey was saying he's sticking with net zero 2050 the two are incompatible if you want to bring down people's energy bills if you want cheap energy If you want to re-industrialise the country and keep good jobs in car manufacturing, steel, glass, ceramics, industry and the industries of the future, like data centres, then you need to get rid of the net zero nonsense and ensure that we go for cheap, reliable energy. That's what reform will do. Some people argue that the reason why the energy bills are cheaper in Europe and why we have the most expensive in the developed Western world is because they have much more use of renewable energy. therefore driving the cost down and making it cheaper no no that is not that's not that's not the root of what's happened we've actually gone for extremely expensive renewable energy because it's intermittent the sun doesn't always shine the wind isn't always blowing and so when it isn't you've got to then rely on very very expensive forms of energy what reform wants to do is make use of every drop of oil and gas in the North Sea, do onshore exploration as well, accept that gas is here to stay for the foreseeable future and have gas-fired power stations, go big on new nuclear, building them safely but cheaply, as they are in many other countries like South Korea, for example. We are building new nuclear power plants. No, we're not. We're not. New nuclear power plants size well. Well, that's one example in the last 25 years. Come on. Successive governments have been pathetic at building new nuclear. Yes, they have been. But one of the reasons why it's very difficult is because the price is very expensive, the price to guarantee that energy. Well, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be that expensive. Well, one of the problems with new nuclear at the moment is that it's insanely expensive to build these new nuclear power stations because you end up gold-plating all the rules and regulations. There are plenty of other countries in the world, like South Korea, for example, like France, who are able to build new nuclear power stations much, much cheaper. And we at Reform set out as one of our 64 growth creating measures on Monday that we would allow the regulatory regime that enables those countries to build power stations to be used in the UK. And I think you'd see small nuclear reactors being built in communities across the country much, much faster if we did that. Do you support taking only pensioners out of paying income tax on that amount above the personal income tax threshold of £12,500? thousand pounds well the problem with that proposal is it just makes the tax code ever more complicated that there's now a special deal for pensioners what i want to do at reform is raise the tax-free personal allowance to 15 000 pounds for everyone so it doesn't matter whether you're a pensioner or you're a working person you get that and that means that no one would pay income tax on the state pension whatsoever i'm quite right too but it also means for a working household you get a thousand pounds how much in your pocket right now that would cost about 19 billion pounds if it was implemented in the next financial year and where would that come from that 19 by cutting waste we've identified 40 billion pounds of savings that we believe we could do in the first financial year of reform government rising to 80 billion pounds by the end of the period we published that in our own version of the budget on Monday and you know what Not a single economist or commentator has picked any holes in that plan. It really is the... Have they looked at it? Oh, they certainly have. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for example, the growth measures that we put out have been retweeted and so on, but millions of times online. And every think tank in the country, by and large, has said it's one of the best growth plans that's been put together by any opposition. Every think tank in the country has said it's the best growth plan. Well, most of them. I mean, the name we won, there hasn't. Well, give me one that has. Centre for Policy Studies, the IEA, the Adam Smith Institute, looking for growth. I mean, I could go on, but, you know, it's a reflection on the fact that reform has really matured, has put together the most serious, costed plan for government that any opposition has ever done. I've never seen a Labour or Conservative opposition, not in my lifetime, put out a plan as sophisticated and detailed as the one we did on Monday. Because we want to be careful with people's money and we're ready to go to do that big reform budget in the first 100 days after the next general election, which I think is coming very soon. And that would give £1,300 to every household in the country, as well as cutting waste. Sure, there'll be plenty of people poring over those numbers. Just before I let you go, can I ask you about something that seems to have happened in the House of Commons? Nigel Farage wasn't in the Commons for the budget. We understand, we've been told by Nigel Farage, the reason he wasn't in the Commons for the budget was because of a prior physical altercation. At the state opening of Parliament, I got involved, I didn't want to, but I got involved in a physical altercation with an MP in my chamber. I didn't make a fuss about it, I didn't complain, but I could see, given that my prayer card had been removed, I was heading towards another physical altercation. And just sometimes, it's better to avoid conflict. Do you know anything about this? Well, as I understand it, when Nigel went to, I think it was the King's speech, a load of Bolshie Lib Dem MPs got in the way of him and made it very difficult for him to join the procession to go and listen to the King's speech in the normal way. I wasn't a witness to that, but it sounds like it was pretty petty and pretty nasty. And so he decided instead to focus on preparing for the statement that he gave. Excellent statement. Just a few moments ago. So just to be clear about this, the suggestion is you might not have been there yourself, but you may have heard from colleagues. Your suggestion is that Nigel Farage was prevented from getting into the Commons by MPs. No, leaving. He was leaving the chamber when the King's speech happened. No, just for this event today, sorry, the budget today, Nigel Farage has suggested that he wasn't in the Commons today because of a prior physical obligation. Yeah, because I just explained what happened to him last time. What happened to him last time. So I think that's the answer. But anyway, the most important thing here is... Hang on, sorry, so he didn't go to the Commons today because he was prevented from going to the Commons for the King's Speech? Yeah, because there were some very rude and offensive... look, live-in MPs. But look, if you're going to ask me about these things, what really matters is the actual budget. I mean, I know you're always interested in trivia on this show, that what i care about are working people in this country what i care about is working people in this country and you basically saw a do nothing budget today pushing the problems facing this country under the carpet which is just not not even managed decline this is a budget which takes the country backwards it's going to lead to living standards for the average family going down in each of the next five years it's not good enough that's why reform wants to cut 40 billion of waste and ensure that we cut taxes for working people and pensioners now.