Reform UK manifesto: What's in it for tech?

The short answer is nothing, but that isn’t the point of the manifesto

Unseriousness of the Reform UK "contract with the people" is a feature, not a bug.

Reform UK launched its "contract with the British people" yesterday at a press conference in South Wales. Reform doesn't like the word manifesto, but whatever you choose to call it, the document is light on anything relating to the technology sector and workplace.

Immigration and skills

Reducing immigration is the party's defining mission. The party's first pledge is to freeze all "non-essential" immigration, and the only workers deemed essential are those employed in the health and social care sector.

The freeze on immigration would have a chilling effect on the tech sector. Home office figures for the ending June 2023 indicate that 4% of all skilled worker VISAs were issued for programmers and developers and a further 2% for IT business analysts. The impact of an immigration freeze would be to exacerbate the already yawning tech skills gap.

Reform would also introduce an Employer Immigration Tax of 20% for "foreign workers." The only exemptions would be the for those employing health and social care workers and businesses employing fewer than five people.

The contract states that the Employer Immigration Tax "could" raise more than £20 billion over five years to pay for apprenticeships and training for young British people. How? We aren't told.

Economy and tax

Reform has pledged to "back risk takers and wealth creators" and plans for the first 100 days include:

• Lift the minimum profit threshold to £100k and reduce the topline rate of corporation tax from 25% to 20% and then to 15% from year three.
• Abolish IR35 to support sole traders. This may have a benefit for self-employed IT consultants.
• Lift the VAT threshold to £150,000, and longer term reform the tax system. No details or provided other than an assertion that major simplification is needed.

Other pledges are vague, such as fast-tracking infrastructure projects and slashing red tape. There is a hint about the red tape that Reform would like to slash and it seems to be employment laws. "We must make it easier to hire and fire so that businesses can grow," the manifesto says.

Tech adjacent pledges

That's the full extent of the economy, tax and skills part of the contract. There are some interesting pledges that are, if not fully applicable to technology, at least technology adjacent. One appears to indicate a plan to withdraw from the EU Horizon programme, which was described as "a beacon of international collaboration," by The Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society when the UK rejoined last year - to some fanfare from Rishi Sunak and DSIT, after falling out due to Brexit.

According to Reform, UK membership of Horizon "means that we send money to the European Defence Fund and part of the EU's mobility project." How much money? What are the costs and implications of withdrawing from the agreement? Again, we aren't told.

A non-urgent pledge in the Housing part of the contract states: "We will incentivise innovation to speed up modular construction, digital technology and building sites that improve efficiency and cut waste." No further details, or indeed costs, are provided.

Computing says:

To say that Reform UK does not take the needs of the UK technology sector seriously is to miss the point. This document is not a programme for government, and it's not meant to be taken seriously. In fact, when it was taken seriously by economists and analysts, who uniformly declared that it didn't even come close to adding up, leader Nigel Farage acknowledged that people would "argue over numbers," and that he hoped the document would "provoke much more thought and debate over the coming years."

That's the point. The Reform manifesto, such as it is, is designed to be the subject of broadcast media panels and phone-ins for the rest of the campaign and beyond. Its whole purpose is to be debated and debunked, to generate headlines and to ensure that Nigel Farage is never off our screens.

Above all, it's designed to drag the acceptable window of political discourse ever further to the right.

This "contract with the people" shows nothing but contempt for them.