Reform UK campaign launch with Nigel Farage in Cambridgeshire

Nigel Farage has said Reform UK would be “tougher” on spending if its candidates are elected to Cambridgeshire County Council.

He said there should be “cuts in the right places” including on what he described as “money being wasted on climate change initiatives”.

The Reform UK leader made the comments on a visit to Cambridgeshire this week (April 1) as the party launched its campaign ahead of the county council election, and the Mayoral election at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.

Mr Farage said the party has a full set of candidates due to stand in the county council election on May 1, and said the party is “here for real”.

There are currently no elected Reform UK representatives in the county, but Mr Farage said he believed they could win “a significant number of seats”.

Mr Farage hit out at county council debts and said the authority needed an “equivalent of DOGE”, referencing the Department of Government Efficiency initiative being run by Elon Musk in the United States.

In previous years there have been cross party calls for a fair funding review for Cambridgeshire, with politicians highlighting the low level of funding the area receives from central government compared to other areas.

Recently, school leaders have called on MPs to lobby for better funding for education in light of Cambridgeshire being one of the lowest funded areas per pupil.

Mr Farage said while it was true government funding had fallen since 2010, he said this did not “excuse the debts that have been run up by this county”.

Addressing school funding specifically, he said: “The reason that schools are funded less is because you don’t have quite the same social problems in Cambridgeshire, in pockets you do, that maybe you get in parts of East London.

“Of course MPs should lobby central government to get a fair deal, whatever the deal you get though – I go back to the county council’s debts, hundreds-of-millions of debts – is whatever you get, you get.

“You have to cut your cloth and manage your budget accordingly and that has just not been happening, so I think we come in as a fresh face with some genuine business experience, and we are going to be a bit tougher, in fact we are going to suggest that a Cambridgeshire equivalent of DOGE is set up to cut wasteful spending.”

When asked if this meant a Reform UK leadership at the county council would mean more cuts, he said there would be “the right cuts yes”.

He said: “Cuts in the right places, money that is being wasted on climate change initiatives, pension funds that are being managed in accordance with net zero goals rather than reducing economic returns. A change of attitude we think is badly needed.”

Mr Farage was joined on his visit to Cambridgeshire by the Reform UK Mayoral candidate, Ryan Coogan.

Mr Coogan said if he was elected as Mayor at the Combined Authority his main priority would be to “start scrutinising and start auditing the books”.

He also highlighted the county council’s debts and said there was “so much waste going on” at the authority and referenced that the council owned development company This Land had borrowed £127million from the county council.

He said: “That money could have been used actually across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to actually improve the services, but it is not, it is being paid out to a property developer that is failing.”

Mr Coogan also claimed the education system is “failing the SEND students across the county” and said the county council should be increasing spending on that rather than on “vanity projects”.

When asked how he hoped as Mayor of the Combined Authority to impact on the decisions of a separate authority, Mr Coogan suggested he could withhold money as Mayor to force improvements.

He said: “The thing about the Mayor is you have got a position across the county to actually influence every single authority, a lot of the funding that you get as Mayor actually is distributed through the councils to spend.

“So you have a lot of power when you are actually negotiating some of the issues across the county with the various authorities.

“Because if they need something from the Mayoral authority, to actually do at the Combined Authority, and actually they are failing in a particular area, then it is very easy to address that issue in any business negotiation and actually say ‘look this is failing can you deal with that then we can release the funding for this’.”

Mr Coogan said he also wanted to scrutinise the spending at the Combined Authority, particularly on things related to net zero.

He said: “We are talking millions and millions of pounds going out across the county on things like net zero on the cash book, well I need to know what that is, what on earth can we be spending all of this money on things like net zero for.”

There are currently four other candidates that have been announced as standing in the Mayoral election.

They are Paul Bristow (Conservative), Lorna Dupré (Liberal Democrat), Bob Ensch (Green Party), and Anna Smith (Labour).

Full candidate lists for the county council election have not yet been released.

Currently the Liberal Democrats are the largest group at the authority with 23 councillors, followed by the Conservatives with 21 councillors.

Labour has 10 councillors and there are two independent councillors, four non-aligned independent councillors, and one St Neots Independent councillor.