Reform announces measures to create Black Country ‘industrial stronghold’

Reform UK said it will offer businesses tax breaks and other incentives to create an ‘industrial stronghold’ in the Black Country.

Robert Jenrick, Reform’s spokesperson for the Treasury, announced a string of measures at a rally in Wolverhampton on Thursday (November 12).

The first ‘industrial stronghold’ would be created in the Black Country – “one of the regions hardest hit by successive Conservative and Labour governments” according to the Reform MP for Newark.

Each defined area would be offered 10-year “radical tax breaks and incentives to spur re-industrialisation.”

Reform said the measures would include:

Employer National Insurance contributions reduced by 50% for the first £50,000 of earnings for net additional employees for five years

100% first-year tax relief on new brownfield residential buildings, extensions and substantial improvements

10-year exemptions on the extra business rates that result from new investment, from improvements, and from establishing a business in a high street retail unit that has been vacant for more than two years

Streamlining planning policy by creating a presumption in favour of development according to an updated local plan, with a strictly limited set of circumstances in which planning applications can be refused

Mr Jenrick, who joined Reform at the start of the year,  was asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) whether voters in Wolverhampton could trust his word given he was a Conservative MP for 12 years as well as a government immigration, housing and health minister during the period of self-described decline.

He replied: “The Black Country, like much of the country, has been very badly led, not just in the last few years, but for the whole of my adult lifetime. And millions of other people across the country have been on exactly the same journey that I’ve been on.

“People who voted for the Labour Party their whole lives, people who voted for the Conservative Party their whole lives.

“Many people were councillors or MPs for those parties but are joining Reform because they see it as our only opportunity to fix this country and do something that is radically different from what came before.”

Earlier in the week, it was announced Reform UK leader Nigel Farage would headline the rally in Wolverhampton but he did not attend on Thursday due to a “personal issue” according to Mr Jenrick.

The rally in Wolverhampton attended by Reform members on Thursday also saw speeches from deputy leader Richard Tice and the party’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf.

Mr Jenrick’s speech, which did not mention the ongoing war in Iran as a contributor to rising oil prices, later told the LDRS that he believed the war was “making people poorer.”

“We’re a workers party,” he added. “Our primary interest, our sole interest is in working people in this country.”

Mr Jenrick admitted the war against Iran had been “harmful” and denied Mr Farage supported the action against Iran by the USA and Israel.

“We should stand with our allies but we should urge them never to do anything that’s going to hurt working people in this country and unfortunately, this war has had a very damaging effect on living standards,” he added.

“And Nigel, myself and others have said that many times publicly and privately to members of the administration in Washington.”

By Christian Barnett | Local Democracy Reporting Service