Shadow Housing Secretary Sir James Cleverly challenged Reform UK’s plans to prevent foreign nationals from claiming welfare, and criticised the Labour Government over planning enforcement, water bills and its use of the emergency alert system, in an interview with GB News.

“The fact is they’re all over the place on benefits,” Cleverly said, arguing Reform had “been inconsistent” and “flip-flopped” on welfare policy. He pointed to previous Conservative proposals to reduce the benefits bill, which he said Reform had opposed, and questioned whether the party had considered the implications of its plans for British nationals living overseas.

“There’ll be a lot of Brits, particularly in Spain and other places, who will not know what will happen to them if this is brought in,” he said.

Turning to the £5 million donation received by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Cleverly said: “The only figure that we need to think about when it comes to Reform is that £5 million that Nigel Farage received. That’s the only figure in my mind at the moment when I think about Reform.”

‘Everybody in the country should play by the same rules’

Cleverly backed tougher measures on unauthorised traveller sites, claiming the number of sites involving abuse of the planning system had increased by more than 20 per cent during Labour’s first year in government, before the Government stopped collecting the figures.

“Everybody in the country should play by the same rules and abide by the same laws, and those include planning laws,” he said.

He cited an example in his Essex constituency, where he said travellers moved onto land at Willows Green over a bank holiday weekend without planning permission, pouring concrete and connecting electricity and water before subsequently breaching a legal injunction. “This cannot be allowed,” he said.

Cleverly said the Conservatives’ proposals included tightening the planning system and enforcement, alongside leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, which he argued would prevent human rights legislation being used to circumvent planning rules.

‘I am not at all comfortable with water companies trying to surge price’

Cleverly criticised reports that water companies could be permitted to charge customers more during periods of drought. “Water is an absolute necessity, and I am not at all comfortable with water companies using dry weather like this to surge price to try and get more money out of consumers,” he said.

He argued the existing system of spreading water bills across the year allowed households to manage their budgets, and said firms should instead focus on better management of their pipe networks and reducing leaks “before they start trying to make more money out of people when there’s dry weather and drought like we’re seeing at the moment”.

‘This was not an emergency situation’

Cleverly was also critical of the Government’s use of the emergency alert system to warn the public about wildfire risk, arguing it was designed for “emergency life-threatening national situations” rather than public information campaigns.

“This was not an emergency situation,” he said, arguing the risk could have been communicated through social media, television advertising or ministers appearing on news programmes, and questioning why the warning had not been issued earlier given the dry conditions had built up over a longer period. “This is another example of a Labour Government drunk on power, abusing its position, abusing the mechanisms of the state to try and get ahead of the news cycle,” he said.

Cleverly, who previously served as Home Secretary, said he had visited Stourbridge and spoken to residents who had lost their homes to wildfires.

Asked whether repeated use of the alert system could undermine its effectiveness, Cleverly agreed. “If people get into the habit of not looking at these alerts when they come through, if they think, ‘oh, it’s another pain in the backside nonsense announcement from the government’, they will stop looking at the emergency alert,” he said. “The whole point of this is that it’s rarely used and that people pay attention when it is used.”

“It only should be used in a real emergency,” he said.