Nigel Farage makes bombshell pension pledge at Reform press conference

Farage's backing of the triple lock is a smash-and-grab on Tory territory, threatening to hoover up the pensioner vote the Conservatives take for granted.

Conservative Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho has taken aim at Reform UK's Zia Yusuf on social media saying: "You resigned from your party over a burqa ban you now say you support. You reported Rupert Lowe to the police for hurty words and say you care about free speech."

She added: "In the nine months I had in Government I started a reset on Net Zero, pushed back on costs to consumers and on legislation crushing businesses, legislated to protect North Sea licenses, signed off Rosebank and more gas power plants, started the largest expansion of nuclear power in generations and a true costing of renewables."

Ms Coutinho added: "As ‘head of policy’ you spend most of your time sounding like someone whose head was flushed down a toilet too many times at school - all fragile ego without bothering to learn that education policy is devolved or that Grangemouth is not in Wales. Perhaps get off X and into the detail of your brief."

A Conservative Party Spokesman said: “You can’t trust a word Reform say on the triple lock. One minute it is under review, the next it is party policy.

“It is increasingly evident that Robert Jenrick is seeking to push Nigel Farage towards backing a series of unfunded commitments, with no credible plan for delivery.

“This is nothing more than a cynical attempt to distract from their chaotic local election campaign, which is seeing candidates drop out left, right and centre.”

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Reform’s ex-housing spokesman Simon Dudley’s comments on Grenfell Tower were “disgraceful”, Kemu Badenoch has said.

Asked whether she thought Reform should sack him, the Conservative leader said: “Dealing with issues like Grenfell requires a composure and a professionalism that is simply lacking with Reform. All we’re seeing from them seeing them is chaos.“That was a disgraceful comment. You can’t just say everyone dies when a tragedy occurs. You want to know that you have got a government that’s going to be taking those issues very seriously, and the Conservative party are the only credible alternative to the Labour Government right now.”

Steve Reed has said Nigel Farage should apologise for appointing Simon Dudley as Reform UK’s housing spokesman.

The Housing Secretary said: “Simon Dudley’s disgusting comments about those who died in Grenfell Tower show what a shameful failure of judgment it was for him to have been appointed as Reform’s housing spokesperson.

“Reform’s first instinct was to defend him, not sack him, and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into finally doing the right thing.

“Nigel Farage should apologise to the victims’ families for putting Dudley in such a senior position in the first place.”

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper condemned “Iranian recklessness” for “hitting global economic security” as she addressed a virtual meeting of more than 40 countries aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick hosted a tea party after their press conference on the state pension triple lock.

Dr Kristian Niemietz, editorial director of the Institute for Economic Affairs, said: “Reform UK’s commitment to the pensions triple lock is hugely disappointing. It confirms that no major party is willing to be honest with voters about the cost of Britain’s growing pension obligations."

Daniel Herring, head of economic and fiscal policy at the Centre for Policy Studies, added: "Reform's commitment to the triple lock is disappointing for a party that promised radical change.

"By 2070, the OBR projects that pension spending will have risen from 5.1%% to 7.8% of GDP.

"Spending on pensions, along with spending on the NHS and working age and child welfare, is on an unsustainable trajectory and no party is willing to tell the truth about how much this will cost the country.

Following Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s comment this week that she was “angry” with Donald Trump over the Iran conflicy, the Reform UK leader said: “I’m not angry with him for starting this war if – and by the way, he’s been elected saying no more endless foreign wars. His instincts are not to do this.

“And this is not something he’s been arguing since he was president – he’s been making these arguments for over 20 years, way before he was in politics, asking questions about open-ended wars.

“So what is it? OK, Israeli encouragement, I understand that. You know, the Israelis are there and Iran wants to obliterate them and kill them all, so I can understand why Israel would want to do something like this.

“What persuaded Trump to do it? What was the key motivation? And it’s difficult listening to the press conferences sometimes to work that out.

“If the goal of removing Iran as a nuclear power is achieved, the world will have been done a massive favour even if there are some quite big short-term costs – and there are big short-term costs but ones that we should never have allowed ourselves to be so vulnerable on.”

Simon Dudley acted “in a pretty hurtful, insulting way to an awful lot of people”, Nigel Farage has said.

Mr Farage was asked whether he should have told members of his party before announcing Mr Dudley had been sacked as Reform UK housing spokesman at a press conference.

The Reform leader replied: “No, because it happened about an hour ago or hour-and-a-half ago.

“And it’s for Richard Tice to make that announcement, not me.”

Mr Farage said his party was “not a one-man band” and added: “This is somebody who was very recently appointed.

“Whilst he has a track record in building houses and new towns and stuff like that, clearly acted yesterday in a pretty hurtful, insulting way to an awful lot of people.”

Nigel Farage said Britain had been “all over the place” on the Middle East.

The Reform leader told a press conference: “It seems that the Prime Minister has upset the Americans. He’s upset the Cypriots. He’s upset much of the Middle East.

“Whilst he may be right not to commit us militarily to direct involvement, the truth is we couldn’t do it anyway. We haven’t got a Royal Navy.”

Asked if he believed the Americans would abandon their allies to attempts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Mr Farage said: “You asked the question – would it be fair, is it fair that we need the Straits of Hormuz opened? I wouldn’t for a minute think that the Americans would walk away from that.”

Reform UK has sacked its housing spokesman Simon Dudley after he said the Grenfell Tower fire was a “tragedy” but that “everyone dies in the end”.

Asked at a press conference whether Mr Dudley would be sacked, Nigel Farage replied: “That’s already happened.”

The Reform leader added: “He’s not a spokesman for the party – that has been dealt with.”

Robert Jenrick said Reform is looking at whether new civil servants can continue to access “gold-plated” pensions schemes.

Reform's Treasury spokesman announced “a review into the long-term sustainability of continuing to permit new entrants to defined benefit pension schemes in the public sector”.

Robert Jenrick told the press conference: "We can only make the commitment today because we will cut tens and tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money the government wastes every year.

"Reform will balance the books not just on the backs of hardworking people, in fact never on the backs of hardworking people... who have done the right thing, paid in their whole lives.

"We will instead fundamentally reset the priorities of government in a way that no other party has, could or ever would.

"We will reset government spending so that it actually puts the British people first. We will cut waste and spending they don't care for and spending that sometimes is actually harmful to the British people, undermining our society, increasing our bills."

Reform's Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick said: "Millions of pensioners and in fact people in their late 50s and early 60s are genuinely worried at the moment.

"They've paid in for 30 or 40 years but they look at the debt that successive governments have racked up, Labour borrowing left right and centre like the Conservatives did, and they fear something has got to give.

"They fear this government may be soon led by Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband, backed up by Zack Polanski, will pull the rug from under them, will erode, chip away at the pension they've worked and paid into for their whole life. And they're right to be worried.

"Under Reform, it will be different, we will protect pensioners. Today I can announce that a Reform UK government will keep the triple lock for state pensions."

Nigel Farage said: “For me, what decided it was number one, there are a lot of older pensioners who got their pensions before 2016 who are really pretty disadvantaged by the current system.

“Secondly, that the people to whom pensions are being paid, in vast majority – certainly compared to a younger generation today – are those that have actually worked and paid into the system. And we are very much the party of alarm clock Britain – those that work and therefore should reap rewards later in life.

“But the third and most decisive reason is that within the next two weeks, we are going to announce the biggest cuts to the benefits bill ever seen in the history of this country. So when questions get asked in a minute, how can you afford it? Well, we can afford it many, many times over.”

Nigel Farage opened the press conference by saying: “When I said the jury’s out on the triple lock and what we would decide to do on this and with many other issues too, if I could just interpret that into simple English, what I meant was the jury’s out. Not that I’d made my mind up either way.

“And we have discussed it, and we have debated it, and we’ve decided it’s going to stay."

The Reform UK leader had previously questioned whether the policy is affordable.

Nigel Farage is now speaking as Reform UK's press conference gets underway.

Reform's housing spokesman Simon Dudley has taken to X amid calls for him to be sacked over comments about the Grenfell Towel fire.

Sir Ed Davey has called for a 10p fuel duty cut as a temporary three-month measure amid the Iran war.

At a press conference, the Liberal Democrat leader said: “A tank of petrol now costs £11 more than it did before Trump’s war. A tank of diesel is £23 more every time you fill up.

“That is the Trump tax on driving, the Farage tax on driving, the Badenoch tax on driving, and it’s hurting families and businesses across the country.”

He also demanded a 10% cut in rail fares and a £1 cap on bus fares.

Reform UK's press conference where they are expected to announce that the party will back the triple lock is due to kick off in around half an hour.

Held at a venue in central London, members are just starting to arrive - and Reform MP Robert Jenrick has popped in before being shown to the green room.

There is a blue lectern in place and signs emblazoned with the slogan "protecting your pension" on the chairs.

Sir Keir Starmer has urged Nigel Farage to sack Reform UK’s housing spokesman over comments about the Grenfell Tower fire.

Simon Dudley, a former executive at Homes England and the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, said the blaze was a “tragedy” but that “everyone dies in the end”.

The Prime Minister posted on X: “Shameful. Nigel Farage should do the decent thing and sack him.”

Business minister Kate Dearden has said there are “no current supply issues” for fuel in the UK.

Speaking to Sky News, she said: “There are no current supply issues.

“But, of course, we are assessing the situation and governments, of course, plan for contingencies as well.”

She added: “People should, over the Easter weekend, continue to fill up their cars and take those journeys, if they are going for a short trip abroad over the coming days, or whatever plans they have.”

Resident doctors in England are to “press ahead” with planned strikes next week after crunch talks failed to avert the walkouts.

The Department of Health and Social Care said an offer of 1,000 extra training places, which was part of the Government deal on pay and jobs, will no longer be “financially or operationally” possible as the NHS prepares to deal with the fallout from the industrial action.

Tens of thousands of resident doctors in England are set to stage a six-day walkout on Tuesday, immediately after the Easter weekend.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is set to host talks with a coalition of countries today on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Britain is seeking to lead a diplomatic initiative, understood to include 35 countries such as France, Germany and some Gulf nations, to reopen the key shipping route for the global oil and gas industry.

The virtual meeting will look at “all viable diplomatic and political measures” to reopen vital shipping lane, which Iran has effectively closed for most exports.

Kemi Badenoch accused Energy Secretary Ed Miliband of "deliberate stupidity to avoid a U-turn" in a row on X over the Tories' call for more North Sea oil and gas drilling.

Sir Keir Starmer spoke to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday after signalling a fresh push to undo Brexit at a No 10 press conference on the Iran war.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “They condemned Iran’s appalling action in the Strait of Hormuz, which is holding the global economy hostage. They agreed allies must come together and work on a viable plan for full freedom of navigation to resume when circumstances allow.

“They then discussed their shared ambition to further strengthen the partnership between the UK and the European Union, and the need to continue strong support to Ukraine.

“They agreed to keep in close contact as this important work progresses in the lead-up to the next UK-EU Summit.”

The Conservatives have pledged to axe carbon taxes in a bid to save British industry.

The Tories warned that the regime – which is aimed at bringing down emissions – is forcing factories to close, driving jobs overseas and leaving Britain dependent on more polluting foreign imports.

Kemi Badenoch insisted that it is "madness" to reach net zero by "killing British industry".

The Tory leader said: "It’s time to reverse decades of deindustrialisation, by doing what Keir Starmer lacks the backbone to do: axe the carbon tax in its entirety.

“We all want to leave a better environment for the next generation, but it is madness to pursue that goal by killing British industry and fatally weakening our national resilience."

Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick will speak at a Reform UK press conference at 11am.

They are expected to commit to sticking with the state pension triple lock if Reform wins the next general election.