REFORM UK’s Scottish branch is considering adopting a “cruel” proposal to give British-born married couples with children priority for social housing, The National can reveal.
Thomas Kerr, the party’s deputy leader in Holyrood, said he would be “looking closely” at the controversial plans unveiled by his Westminster counterpart Richard Tice earlier in the week.
Tice said that workers under 35 who were born in Britain and married couples with children would go to the top of social housing waiting lists under a Reform government.
The vast majority of social homes across the UK are likely to be occupied by British or Irish nationals. They made up 88.5% of main householders – the person in whose name the social home is rented – in 2024/25, while 11.5% were non-UK/Irish nationals, according to the English Housing Survey. Separate figures are not available for Scotland.
Kerr told The National: “Reform in Scotland will be looking closely at this policy and how aspects of it might be relevant to Scottish housing.
“The public’s eyes have been opened when it comes to young Scots being cheated out of social housing because properties are being used to temporarily house migrants or to satisfy a significant rise in homeless applications made from outside Scotland.
“We need to get a grip and start providing the same opportunities to Scots that we give to strangers.”
The proposal has been slammed, with homelessness charity Shelter previously saying that Reform’s plans were a “blatant distraction from the real cause of the housing emergency”, which the organisation said was the failure to build affordable social homes.
Iris Duane, the Glasgow Green MSP who has spoken in the past about growing up with a single parent, said the plans put families like hers at risk.
She told The National: “As someone who was raised by a single parent, at times living in social housing, I find it utterly shameful that had I grown up under a Reform UK government, they would've sought to put myself and my mum in immediate danger for no better reason than to seem ‘tough’.
“It's a disgraceful indictment of how the ‘nasty party’ label has found a new home.”
Duane added: “Prioritising people for social housing based on their nationality or relationship status actively excludes vulnerable individuals in our society who also need access to housing – including single parents, people fleeing domestic violence, and refugees with settled status who live, work, study and contribute to our society.
“The guise of prioritising married couples and UK-born nationals does not offer any real solutions to the housing crisis sweeping the UK. It is a blatant expansion of their most racist and misogynistic policies that would cause both intended and unintentional harm.”
Susan Murray, the LibDems’ Scottish affairs spokesperson, hit out at the proposals and also slammed Reform UK’s previous pledge to evict foreign nationals from social housing.
She said: “Threatening UK residents and workers, including for example many of our nurses and health care professionals with eviction because they were born outside the UK shows the Reform Party are intent on dividing every local community for their own ends.
“This idea is a cruel gimmick aimed at victimising the poorest for Britain’s failure to build the social homes we need.
“We need a serious plan to tackle the housing crisis, not irresponsible nonsense from Reform.”
Sarah Elliott, the chief executive of Shelter, said: “Reform’s plans to change how social housing is allocated are a blatant distraction from the real cause of the housing emergency, which is decades of political failure to build enough genuinely affordable social homes – not because any one group has had an unfair advantage.
“The solution is building more social homes, not changing the order of the queue.”
She said Reform’s plans were “designed to stoke division” and would only serve to tear communities apart and put more people at risk of homelessness.
“Putting nationality and employment ahead of housing need, and moving away from a system designed to prioritise people who are homeless or at urgent risk of homelessness could leave even more families trapped in awful temporary accommodation for years on end.
“Not to mention putting those escaping domestic abuse and violence at serious risk of harm.
“There are already strict rules on who can access social housing, and councils are legally required to prioritise people in greatest housing need.”
Elliott said the focus should instead be on building 90,000 social homes over the next decade.
In response to criticism, Kerr added: “The attitude that Reform is ‘dividing communities’ because it wants local people to benefit local areas by staying in local housing is ludicrous.
“What’s more divisive for a community than housing bus-loads of strangers in towns and villages when many don’t contribute and shun integration.”
