Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown

Ashfield MP says he used to help clients exploit rules at Citizens Advice Bureau and now backs tougher welfare reforms by Reform UK

Lee Anderson, the Member of Parliament for Ashfield and welfare spokesman for Reform UK, acknowledged during a press conference on Wednesday that he once “gamed” the benefits system while working at the Citizens Advice Bureau.

He stated: “Before I came into politics, I worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau… We used to fill the form out for clients… I can tell you now, we were gaming the system.”

Mr Anderson described the activity as a competition between the adviser and the Department for Work and Pensions, claiming advisers at the bureau achieved a “100 per cent hit rate” and even obtained personal independence payments for “the fittest man in Ashfield.”

At the same event, Reform UK’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, accused Citizens Advice of facilitating exploitation and outlined the party’s welfare reform proposals: replacing remote interviews with face-to-face assessments, increasing reassessments for those already eligible and imposing stricter oversight on personal independence payments, particularly among under-25s whose caseload, according to Mr Yusuf, “has tripled in five years.”

Mr Anderson reinforced the theme by calling the current generation “the alarm-clock generation” replaced by what he termed an “anxiety generation,” asserting that too many young people remain at home, “courtesy of taxpayer-funded employment support, loans and personal independence payments.” He also challenged a recent criticism from Conservative peer Lord Heseltine, who likened Reform UK to extremist movements from the twentieth century.

The MP dismissed the remark as “deeply unpleasant” and urged Heseltine to “shut up and go away.”

Labour Party spokespeople responded by arguing that Reform UK’s welfare blueprint “is already falling apart.” Mr Anderson’s admission and the party’s reform agenda underline the shifting welfare narrative ahead of the next election, situating Reform UK firmly on a platform of cutting perceived exploitation while retraining its message for working-class communities.