Voters in Reform Seats Don’t Like Nigel Farage’s Plan to Rip Up Workers’ Rights

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Reform UK is “massively out of step” with the British public on workers’ rights, new polling suggests.

Nigel Farage’s party announced last month that it would introduce a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ to axe Labour’s Employment Rights Act.

Launching the plans, Farage branded a raft of UK laws protecting workers “daft”, saying: “We will repeal things that are unnecessary or against the strategic national interest.” He claimed “well-intentioned legislation…is having exactly the opposite effect” suggesting the Employment Rights Act was “destroying jobs for young people” despite most of it not actually having come into effect yet.

But a large new representative poll – of more than 40,000 people – commissioned by the Trades Union Congress and Hope Not Hate, suggests Labour’s Employment Rights Act’s flagship policies are hugely popular with the electorate, including in constituencies with Reform MPs.

In April, several key planks of Labour’s workers’ rights plans will come into force, including Statutory Sick Pay rights from the first day of illness, and entitlement to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave from the first day of employment. Labour is making these changes a key plank of its local elections campaign messaging.

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The polling comes as the TUC launches its “Stop the Steal” campaign in Westminster today, which is aimed at protecting workers’ rights in response to Reform’s plans.

In Nigel Farage’s own constituency of Clacton, over three-quarters of people (77%) support banning exploitative zero hours contracts by giving workers a contract that reflects their regular hours.

Eight in ten (81%) support ending fire and rehire. Two thirds (66%) support the right to sick pay from day one of illness. And more than four-fifths (86%) support turning the minimum wage into a real living wage.

The TUC says this “overwhelming” support is mirrored across every parliamentary seat Reform currently holds – and in every parliamentary constituency across the UK.

The TUC described Reform’s Great Repeal Bill – which will also axe the Renters’ Rights Act and the Equality Act – as a “steal” of vital rights and protections.

The union body says it is vital the Employment Rights Act – and broader Make Work Pay agenda – is delivered in full to tackle Britain’s ‘insecure work epidemic’.

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Analysis published last month by the Work Foundation revealed that the number of people on zero-hours contracts had hit record levels of 1.23 million.

And over one in eight workers across the economy currently find themselves in insecure work.

The TUC held a media stunt in Westminster this morning to launch its “Stop the Steal” campaign.

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “Reform’s so-called Great Repeal Bill would steal away vital rights and protections.

“Nigel Farage wants to strip working people of essentials like day-one sick pay and a fairer minimum wage. At the same time he’d give bad bosses free rein to exploit staff by keeping practices like zero-hours contracts and fire-and-rehire firmly in place.

“This anti-worker agenda is massively out of step with the British public, who believe everyone deserves basic security and dignity at work.”

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The union body’s leader added that Farage “likes to claim he’s taking on the elites.”

“The reality is he wants to hand more power to vested interests and his wealthy corporate backers.”

Nowak also called for Labour to deliver its ‘Make Work Pay’ agenda in full, hinting at calls for a follow-up law to the Employment Rights Act.

A campaign is growing in unions to push for a second round of employment rights legislation. The Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, backed by leaders of the RMT, PCS and Unison unions among others says: “Now is the time when the whole of our movement needs to be mobilised to demand an Employment Rights #2 Bill that will correct the deficiencies in the new Act and legislate for those important trade union issues that were left out.”

They want to see sector wide collective bargaining (where pay rates are set across industries through negotiation with unions), repealing more of Margaret Thatcher’s anti-union legislation, and moves towards a ‘single status’ of worker to clamp down on so-called ‘bogus self-employment’.

Hope Not Hate CEO Nick Lowles said: “Reform’s plans to repeal key workers’ rights are a world away from where the British public are at. From Green to Reform supporters – these are rights that have huge support up and down the country.”

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Lowles added that while Reform voters aren’t a “homogenous bloc”, what many have in common is their support for stronger rights at work.

“The government should be talking up the threat Nigel Farage poses to popular and vital workplace protections.”

HOPE not hate conducted an online poll of 45,349 adults in the UK through Focaldata between 1st August and 11th September 2025. The results have been projected to Westminster parliamentary constituencies using Multi-level Regression and Poststratification, a statistical technique for estimating public opinion in small areas from larger surveys using census data.

What the data shows

Byline Times graphic via TUC/Hope Not Hate. Note that the x-axis starts at 55% rather than 0 to better show the variation between constituencies and policies, since all figures are well above 60%.

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While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of Nigel Farage’s party when actually in power