Farage is now taking questions from the media with the first one from the BBC's Alex Forsyth.

She asks if his 24-page plan is simply a wish list, rather than a plan, as he is proposing a whole load of popular ideas that he hopes will get votes?

"It is a promise," Farage says, and this is what we are going to campaign on over the next five years.

"These are the principles, these are the issues," he says.

"We are not going to be in government this time round," Farage accepts, "but we are going to provide a voice of opposition."

Farage is then asked whether the pledges made in the Reform UK manifesto, or contract, are unserious. To which Farage says "it's radical, it's fresh thinking".

"Britain is broken, Britain needs reform," Farage adds, saying that his party is "unashamedly radical".

Image source, Reuters

After Farage's speech, Reform UK chairman Richard Tice starts talking about how his party will fund its plans.

He says "unfunded spending" has got the UK "into a right pickle", and warns about the size of the fiscal deficit.

He then moves on to the costs of reducing carbon emissions, saying "if you scrap net zero" the savings for the taxpayer will be around £30bn a year for 25 years - or about £600 per adult.

"We're the only party that has the courage to say this is unfunded spending, it's costing us a fortune, it's not going to save the planet, and it's got to stop," he says.

He says taxes have risen but the quality of public services has not, saying "you've got to cut out the waste from the back office and invest it in the front office", adding it's "nonsense" to say savings can't be made in the public sector.

• Our climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, will be looking at Reform UK's climate policy soon on this page

Alison Holt
Social affairs editor

Reform’s main idea for adult social care in England is to set up a Royal Commission within the first one hundred days of a new government.

This would draw up a national plan for a sustainable system to support people who are older and disabled in the community.

The party also talks about providing tax incentives, VAT breaks and says more funding will be needed when a plan is agreed.

There have been many previous reports and inquiries into how to reform the care system.

In 1999, a Royal Commission put forward plans for change, and in 2011, the Dilnot Commission also drew up a blueprint for the future.

Many on the frontline of social care say rather than more plans, they need action.

Currently care services rely on staff recruited from overseas. Reform says it will allow essential immigration, mainly around healthcare, but there isn’t a specific mention of social care.

Nigel Farage concludes his party's "vision" for the UK by saying that his party is both traditional and radical.

He says this is "step one".

"Our real ambition is the 2029 general election, this is our first push," Farage adds.

The manifesto launch ends with applause.

Image source, PA Media

Farage now turns his focus to the issue of the NHS, which he calls "the big one" and an issue that needs a "genuine radical rethink".

"We're not getting bang for our buck," he says, adding that there's a growing level of disenchantment that the service is not fit for purpose.

He says the UK should look at other funding models work, such as France.

"Let's be radical with our thinking", he says.

He then talks about people on benefits, saying that a lot of people receiving them don't want to be on benefits.

"They want to go back to work but the system massively disincentives this", Farage says, adding that raising the income tax threshold to £20,000 would make "a massive difference" and make work pay.

Farage now moves on to defence spending, as he tells supporters at the launch event that the world hasn't been in a more perilous place.

He criticises the Conservative Party's pledge to introduce national service, saying that instead of recruiting people part-time there should be a push in investment for "full-timers".

He goes on to say that the government should increase defence spending up to 2.5% and then 3% of GDP.

• As a reminder, Rishi Sunak has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

Nigel Farage says he wants Reform UK to be a party on the side of working people.

He says the most innovative policy is to ensure people only start paying taxes once they are earning more than £20,000 a year.

On inheritance tax, Farage says the current laws were "never designed for people in the middle", but rather those on the "upper income scale" so "we will go up to £2 million before inheritance tax would kick in".

He says this issue depends on where you live or what property values are, but that simplification "matters to us".

Will Reform save £30bn by scrapping net zero?published at 13:36 British Summer Time 17 June

13:36 BST 17 June

Reform UK is pledging to make big savings from government spending on net zero – that’s the UK’s pledge to take as much of its greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere as it puts in by 2050.

Reform claims that “scrapping net zero and related subsidies” would save £30bn per year.

The UK government is currently spending around £8bn per year on investment in emissions reduction, according to, external the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

And the Climate Change Committee estimates, external economy-wide investment costs, including in households purchasing electric vehicles and domestic heat pumps, will be around £50bn per year in the coming decade

However, there are also projected to be savings to households from these zero carbon forms of energy, relative to relying on fossil fuels, in the coming decades.

And most economists judge that the costs of the UK failing to pursue net zero will ultimately be greater than the costs of achieving it.

The OBR produced a scenario, external of “unmitigated global warning” in 2021 which showed UK public sector net debt rising to 300% of GDP by the end of the century due to economic shocks of a hotter climate.

Farage goes on to criticise net zero. The UK has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, meaning it would take as much of these planet-warming gases - such as carbon dioxide - out of the atmosphere as it puts in.

Some of the biggest bills families are facing are energy bills, Farage says, adding that net zero policies have been championed by the Tories and followed by Labour.

He claims steelmaking is “going” in south Wales and the government thinks it's “good because we reduce the CO2 that we emit, but we don't".

“We want to get rid of the subsidies paid to green energy companies,” he adds.

Nigel Farage says he believes this election should be the immigration election, while "others would rather not discuss it".

He says the Conservatives have said they would reduce the numbers of immigration, "for a fifth manifesto in a row" and claims that "one in 30 people on the streets of Britain today have come here in the last two years alone".

(We'll take a look at this claim later.)

Farage then says that he wants an "overall freeze on net migration numbers" to "help us at least try to catch up".

"We also have to say that it's only right and proper that you get benefits once you've been here for five years, obey the law and pay taxes," he says.

Farage says this type of approach is "discriminatory in favour of British taxpayers".

Some context: Net migration - the number of people coming to the UK, minus the number leaving - to the UK was 685,000 in 2023, according to official figures. It was a fall from 2022's record net migration figure, which has been revised upwards to 764,000. However, the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said net migration "remained at unusually high levels".

Image source, Reuters

Farage says "we're for helping the little guy, millions of men and women out there trying to get on".

He adds that Labour and the Tories are only about "listening to the giant corporates" and that his party would "restore trust in politics".

"You might dislike what we say, you might not even want to vote for what we say, but at least we do say what we mean," he claims.

Farage says Labour is not too different to the Conservatives.

"It's just more incompetent," he says, wasting even more money, with Wales as a perfect example.

He then says that the Conservatives have been a "feeble" opposition in Wales .

Nigel Farage says in Wales there's a Labour government, and people in Wales pay more taxes, and spending is higher on public services, but NHS waiting times are 50% longer here.

He adds that Wales has fallen further behind England in education and that the Labour government here "reduced your freedom".

Farage, who is launching his party's manifesto (or as he calls it, contract) in Wales, then turns to the 20mph speed limits imposed in the country.

It is met with boos from the crowd.

In 2022, the Senedd voted to make Wales the first nation in the UK to adopt 20mph as the default speed limit on restricted roads.

Image source, PA Media

Farage says Reform is a party that knows what it believes in.

"We believe in the family, in community, in country", he says, and the party's aim is to provide "clear, consistent and growing leadership".

My aim is to create a "big genuine mass movement of people", he says, which he adds is highly achievable.

The Reform UK leader says "we're not pretending we’re going to win this election", adding that we would have much preferred for this election to take place in October.

“We're running very fast to catch up," he says, claiming that a rapidly increasing number of young people are now coming to Reform UK.

Farage says growing support for his party marks the first important step as he bids to become an opposition party to Labour - if the left-wing party wins the upcoming general election, which he suggests will happen multiple times.

He says he cannot see the Conservative party in a position to provide opposition, because in his words the right-wing party is divided.

Farage says many people who voted for Brexit feel "disenchantment".

He says there is a complete lack of leadership in government, as he blames the establishment for the state of the country right now.

In a jibe at two events where people threw things at him - and were subsequently apprehended by local authorities - the Reform UK leader says he's used to things being thrown at him.

Farage says he could see a huge gap in society before the Brexit referendum and the shock of that result showed that the gap existed.

He thinks that gap is now even bigger than it was in June 2016.

Farage goes on to say that there's a breakdown of trust in politics, adding that manifestos keep making the same promises, but no one believes them.

"That's why today is not a manifesto launch," he says, insisting that people associate them with “lies”.

As a reminder - Reform says it's launching a "contract" with the people today.

Farage now lists all the ways he thinks Britain is broken.

"I'm absolutely in no doubt that we are in decline culturally, we've begun to forget who we are", he says.

All this would be ok if we had clear political solutions, he says, but adds that the political system is also broken.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage says he didn't think he would be doing this "ever again", running in a general election.

But he has decided to come out of retirement because he feels the UK is broken, adding that the politics is broken.

As Farage is starting his speech, the PA news agency has taken an early look at Reform's "contract" - its version of a manifesto.

In the foreword, Farage says: "The Tories have broken Britain. Labour will bankrupt Britain. A vote for either is a vote for more dishonesty and defeat."

The first two of the party's five core pledges are on immigration, as it pledges to freeze "all non-essential immigration" which it claims will "boost wages, protect public services, end the housing crisis and cut crime".

Reform also claims it will "stop the boats" in its first 100 days with a four-point plan, including leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The remaining three core pledges ask voters to "imagine no NHS waiting lists"; "imagine good wages for a hard day's work" and "imagine affordable, stable energy bills".

We'll have more from Reform UK's launch, including analysis from our team of experts, soon.