What Reform UK’s senior figures really think about women and families

Reform UK has a checkered history on women and families; Some of the party’s leading figures have come under criticism for their views.

Matt Goodwin, the party’s candidate in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, has previously called for a “biological reality” check on young girls and suggested people who don’t have children should be taxed extra as a penalty. The new policy chairman of the party is Dr. James Orr has previously argued that marriage is best for children when it is between a man and a woman.

Nigel Farage himself came under fire last year for his comments about women. men are ready to sacrifice their family life for the sake of successful careers In a way, many women are not like that.

As the party surges in the polls and looks to get its best team ready for the election. Independent took a look at exactly what key figures in the party are saying about marriage, women, abortion and fertility, and what it might mean for policy.

Marriage

In 2025, Mr Farage was accused of “vile homophobia” for claiming heterosexual couples were more stable than same-sex relationships at a press conference inviting former Conservative MP Danny Kruger to join Reform UK.

Mr Farage, who has been married twice and is currently in a relationship, said “the most stable relationships are between men and women” when asked about past comments from the right-winger, the first Tory MP to join Farage’s party.

Mr Kruger, who switched from the Conservative Party to the Reform ranks last year, previously told the National Conservatism conference that marriage between men and women was “the only basis for a safe and successful society”.

This is a view echoed by the party’s new policy chief.

Speaking at the Family Education’s Trust’s 2025 Annual Conference, Dr Orr said: “All the data suggest that children are better off with a mother and father, preferably at home, preferably when they are biologically related to them. This is a hard data to put forward in our permissive age, but it is true.”

Describing families which are made up of a heterosexual couple with children as “natural”, he added: “There needs to be some kind of normative ideal, there needs to be some benchmark that we can at least aspire to… that the state, to some extent, can help families aspire to.”

Abortion

Nigel Farage has previously taken aim at abortion laws in the UK, claiming they are “completely out of date” and “it’s ridiculous that we allow abortion up to 24 weeks”.

Mr Kruger, the Reform MP for East Wiltshire, once challenged the idea that pregnant women have an “absolute right to bodily autonomy” in a debate about abortion, sparking protests in his constituency.

He later explained that he “does not want to, as has been alleged, dictate what a woman should do with her own body”, adding that her stance on abortion “reflects the status quo” and that she supports the Abortion Act of 1967.

It comes as MPs vote to decriminalize abortion in England and Wales; While these reforms protect women, they also maintain penalties for medical professionals and abusive partners who terminate pregnancies outside the existing legal framework.

Last year a Reform spokesman said the party had no position on abortion and did not intend to make changes to existing abortion laws.

But the party’s new policy chairman has described Britain’s abortion laws as “excessive”.

Dr Orr told the Family Education Trust’s 2025 annual conference: “I think two or three days ago there was an interview with a doctor on Times Radio who said that although Britain has one of the most extreme abortion regimes in the world, 24 weeks, we’re in the same situation as North Korea, China and God help us, Canada – that wasn’t extreme enough, we had to push for 37 weeks for 38 weeks.”

Fertility and birth rates

Earlier this month, Independent Reformation has revealed that Matt Goodwin, the UK’s candidate in the upcoming by-elections, has previously called for a “biological reality” check on women and girls and offered his views on how the UK should deal with its looming “fertility crisis”.

Days ago, Dr. It was revealed that Goodwin had previously suggested that people who do not have children should be taxed extra as a penalty. The unearthed clip, published on her personal YouTube channel in November 2024, showed the old academic warning that “many women in Britain are having children too late”.

While Nigel Farage later silenced the proposal to tax childless people, saying the party had no plans to raise taxes, he said that if his party came to power, those with “a fairly small number of children” could be given tax breaks to help with living costs.

Dr Orr also defended pro-natalist public policy, saying that “the gap between desired fertility and actual fertility is increasingly widening in most parts of the West”.

While he said this was “not about forcing women to make choices they don’t want,” he added that “it is perfectly legitimate for social conservatives and all of us to ask why and what can be done” to facilitate “bringing new life into the world.”

But despite these comments about the falling birth rate, Reform UK has delivered on its promise earlier this year to remove the two-child benefit cap that penalizes families with more than two children.

Mr Farage promised to lift the cap in May last year, saying it was “the right thing to do”, but later said it should only be lifted for working British families.

But Reform UK’s new Treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, said on Wednesday the policy “must remain” and called for the cap to be retained, as Mr Farage admitted his “attempt to be pro-family has failed”.

women at work

The most concrete policy on women and families that Reform has introduced so far is the plan to repeal the Equality Act, announced by Reform’s new education and equalities spokesperson, Suella Braverman.

However, the announcement raised concerns that it could negatively impact women, given its role in protecting maternity leave and discrimination against mothers and pregnant women.

Following the announcement, the Good Law Project accused Reform UK of “appealing to the votes of misogynists, homophobes, racists and antisemites who are the only people who benefit from the removal of discrimination protections”.

And in 2025, Mr Farage risked triggering a debate over sexism after telling a luncheon in Westminster that more men were “ready to sacrifice their family lives to pursue careers and succeed in the way that fewer women are”.

“And these women probably have a better chance of reaching the top than men,” she added.