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WATCH IN FULL: Danny Kruger outlines Reform's three-point plan to 'restore Whitehall'
Oct 28, 2025
Reform UK MP Danny Kruger has outlined the party's plans to "restore Whitehall" and reduce headcount in the civil service.Speaking at the press conference, Mr Kruger said: "The first thing is we will be prepared. The second thing we will do is to grip the civil service itself."It is simply not acceptable, and Reform UK will not accept that, ministers have to take advice from and trust the execution of their decisions to, officials who answer to different bosses than them and who they cannot when they need to quickly remove from their posts."The Reform MP said the party will bring more expertise, advice and "executive capability from outside Government to serve in Whitehall".It said it will reform the civil service code to "ensure officials at the top of the civil service and certainly those at the centre of Government are directly answerable to politicians".WATCH ABOVE.
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Thank you very much, Ian. Thank you all. Thanks for coming. It's very good to see you all
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A lot of my old friends from the think tank world here today, including Tim Knox, my first
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boss in Tufton Street, Tufton Street out in force today. So good to see you all. I'm going
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to start by risking a metaphor. And people keep asking me how I feel having left the
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sinking ship of the Tory party. And I feel pretty good. We are riding high. The wind
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is in our sails. I'm on a ship that is actually going somewhere. And of course, as we all
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know, reform is a bit of a pirate ship, led by a buccaneering, charismatic captain, an
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ill-disciplined crew, sometimes badly ill-disciplined, but a powerful ship with a dangerous broadside
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a terror to its rivals. Now the job of Zia and Nigel and Richard and me and our colleagues
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is to help turn this pirate ship into His Majesty's Royal Navy ship of the line
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ready to enter the King's service and serve our nation. That is our job, and it's a serious job
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And yes, reform believes that politics can be fun, but the people I've met since joining this party last month are deadly serious
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And I was at a street stall this weekend. David Bull, our chairman, organized a national membership drive and we had stalls across the country and I was at one in Wiltshire
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And one of our activists said to me about Labour and the Conservatives, he said, they call themselves the grownups, but they're not
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They're just playing at politics. We reform. We need to be the real grownups. We need to actually take charge of the system
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and make it better and make it work for the country. And he was right
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So let us start with the problem. And polling and focus grouping and door knocking
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and all of our personal experiences confirmed the state of Britain in 2025
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Nothing works properly. It's impossible to build anything. The streets are dirty and unsafe
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Taxes and prices are far too high. Immigration is changing our country for the worse and far too fast
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And we are becoming poor, sick and unhappy. There is a malaise over Britain
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And these problems are complex, but the effective cause of them is simple
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Since 1997, we have had governments that, firstly, don't share the attitudes of the country they govern
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And secondly, they aren't properly in charge of the state. So we will change that
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Reform UK will be a government of national preference preferring the ideas the institutions and the people of the United Kingdom over the ideas institutions and citizens of elsewhere And we will restore the basis of our democracy putting ministers properly in charge of the government and answerable to Parliament for their decisions
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So let me set out what we will do if we win a majority. And I want to briefly discuss four things this morning
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The first thing is this. We will be ready. When Nigel Farage walks into number 10 as Prime Minister on the day after the next election
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I don't want the Cabinet Secretary to welcome him in like the latest short-term tenant of the building
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sit him down for a briefing on the House rules, and then politely ask if he'd like to change anything about the decor
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I want Nigel and his Cabinet to sit the civil servants down and tell them the plan
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and the plan is going to be a lot bigger and more structural
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than a few pieces of decorative legislation. So we are working with policy specialists, with lawyers
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with parliamentary draftsmen and with a whole range of former and serving officials
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who are helping us plot a path through the thicket of Whitehall and parliamentary process
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If we win the election, we will have legislation drafted and ready to go
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a new ministerial code and civil service code drafted, Orders in council prepared
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People lined up for key appointments. And it will all start on day one
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So the first thing is we will be prepared. The second thing that we will do is to grip the civil service itself
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It is simply not acceptable, and Reform UK will not accept, that ministers have to take advice from and trust the execution of their decisions to
4:34
officials who answer to different bosses than them, and whom they cannot, when they need to, quickly remove from their posts
4:42
So we will bring more expertise, advice and executive capability from outside government to serve in Whitehall
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We will reform the Civil Service Code to ensure that officials at the top of the Civil Service
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and certainly those at the centre of government are directly answerable to politicians, including for their jobs
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And let me be very clear, the growth of the Civil Service will be reversed
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After falling in the wake of the global financial crisis, the headcount of the civil service rose again after Brexit
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Shame on the Tories. And it passed 500,000 in 2003. So we put the civil service on notice that under a reform government
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we expect the headcount to fall dramatically. And it won't be like last time under the Tories when they reduced numbers and froze pay
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and the civil service just gave themselves all promotions up the pay scale and therefore
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pay rises and we ended up with a bigger wage bill than before. You can see there this absurd
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transformation of the shape of the civil service from a pyramid to basically a pillar with more people at the top than at the bottom So that has got to change And as we do that as we cut the system cut the headcount we can do something else
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And this is another thing I hope the Civil Service will be ready for if we win power
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In the last 30 years, as the size of government grew, so did its physical footprint
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both beyond London and Westminster. Britain used to administer an empire from a couple of buildings grouped around Downing Street
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In the 1820s, Sir Robert Peel ran the Home Office with 17 officials
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Lloyd George delivered the People's Budget in 1911 with a treasury of 26 people
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And, of course, in those days, Westminster was a residential district. Now, in 2025, it's a wasteland of acronyms
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The MOJ, the DWP, the DFT, the DFE, the DHSC, the MHCLG
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all housed in these great glass and steel towers, mostly empty, because everyone's working from home
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So if we look at this map here, you can see at least five buildings whose leases are all coming up for renewal before the end of the next parliament
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And a reformed government will not renew those leases. There's something in the region of 100 million of annual savings right there, just in those buildings
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Half a billion over a five-year term. So a more concentrated government machine will be cheaper, leaner and more accountable to ministers, parliament and the public
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And our ambition is to make Whitehall, Whitehall again, to restore the civil service to the street called Whitehall
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So I've explained that we will be ready for government and we will take back control of the Whitehall machine
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The third thing we'll do is this. We'll make sure the wider system outside Whitehall also respects the mandate of the government
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Nigel Farage will not let established conventions or vested interests or bogus appeals to higher
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authorities in the will of Parliament get in the way of the plan that has been accepted
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by the public in a general election. We want to restore the proper basis of our democracy
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whereby public servants answer to ministers who answer to Parliament. We don't come with a chainsaw or a wrecking ball. We respect the institutions of the country
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the armed forces, the police, the church, the judiciary, and we respect the professionalism and expertise of the people who work in them
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so long as those people respect in their turn the right of Parliament and of ministers
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to make the rules they work by. That means ensuring the House of Lords does not obstruct legislation passed by the Commons
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It means stopping public sector unions, sabotaging the reforms the public rightly demands
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and it means exiting international legal conventions and changing the rules on judicial review that
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allow judges to countermand the decisions of the government. The price of judicial independence
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is that the courts should be genuinely non without the power to apply their own notions of what the law should be let alone to block or reverse decisions rightly made by the government That is the real rule
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of law, the independent application of laws made by Parliament. So to recap, we will be
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ready for government, we will grip the Whitehall machine, and we won't let the wider system stop us. And this is my fourth and final point. The institution we respect the most is our
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sovereign parliament. International law and the civil service and the quangocracy and the trades
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unions, they are not there to second-guess the government, but parliament is. Now, Reform UK is
9:22
not best pleased with the current parliament. Yet, what was Brexit for? What are our elections for
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if not to establish and empower our sovereign parliament? Reform UK will restore parliamentary
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government. That means using its existing powers, as Nigel suggested we do yesterday
9:40
to set up a proper parliamentary commission to look at the grooming gangs. And it means
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restoring the role of Parliament as the proper legislative body of the country. Our immediate
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priorities require legislation that, backed by our election mandate, we will pass as fast
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as we can. But alongside this rightful urgency, we will reform Parliament to ensure it does its
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proper job to scrutinise bills and hold the government to account on behalf of the public
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Let me finish with a call to action. We need help now as we prepare for government. Zia Yousaf
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and my parliamentary colleagues and I are setting up a series of advisory groups and sounding boards
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to gather insights into how things work and how they need to change. I'm publishing a blog today
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setting out what I've been saying in greater detail. If you feel you can contribute publicly
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or privately, please get in touch with us. Because I can't stress enough the weight of
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responsibility, the importance of the mission that Nigel Zier, Rich and the rest of us have
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taken on. The fundamental reason that people are increasingly backing reform is because
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they believe us when we say we will bring change. In 2016 with Brexit and 2019 with Boris Johnson
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People voted for change, but they got chaos and stasis, crisis and drift
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The current government came into office promising change, but everything has carried on as before, indeed worse
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And I'm not sure our democracy can stand another government promising change and delivering failure
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I know Nigel Farage is determined to be different. But to help him be the Prime Minister, the country so badly needs him to be
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We need the country's help. So if you want to help get the pirate ship reform transformed into HMS reform, ready to govern, then please join us
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Step up. Step forward. Get involved. Britain needs reform, and reform needs you
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Thank you very much
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