Farage did have taxpayer-funded security after accepting £5m gift from billionaire

Nigel Farage received taxpayer-funded security after secretly accepting a £5m gift from a crypto billionaire that he has claimed was needed to pay for his protection. The Reform UK leader accepted the sum from Christopher Harborne weeks before he entered Parliament. The gift was not declared on the MPs’ register. Farage received the £5m gift in April 2024, and was elected as the MP for Clacton in July that year. The Reform leader has stated the gift was to pay for his personal security. Shorts The i Paper can now reveal that Farage was given taxpayer-funded security when he became an MP and it was in place when he took his seat, including an eight-person protection team and two vehicles. This newspaper reported earlier this week that Farage declined publicly-funded security when his protection was reviewed a year later, and the level of support was reduced. The revelation Farage had taxpayer-funded security after accepting the £5m gift will increase scrutiny on Reform over the money. Several different reasons for accepting it have been given so far. Reform has insisted there is no contradiction, because the gift was intended to provide longer-term funding for his security. When the £5m gift was first revealed earlier in 2026, Farage said the money had been given to him so that he would be “safe and secure for the rest of my life”. “I have tried and failed in the past to get security funded by the Home Office and I don’t think the state will ever help me,” he also claimed. Farage had taxpayer-funded security at the point he entered Parliament in July 2024. Before the general election, parliamentary candidates were offered security support following risk assessments. He had an eight-person security detail and two cars to protect him, a Reform source told The i Paper. His publicly-funded protection was later reviewed in July 2025 by Parliament’s then head of security Alison Giles, and he was offered a smaller team. A Reform spokesperson told The i Paper earlier this week that Farage had declined this because he considered it a “downgraded and inadequate package”. It would have provided Farage with a similar level of protection to that given to Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch and some senior Cabinet ministers. After declining the offer, Farage has since funded his own private security. The £5m gift is at the centre of an investigation by Parliament’s standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg, who has been looking into whether Farage broke rules by not declaring it. That investigation has been paused while the Reform leader fights a by-election in his Clacton seat. Changing explanations for the $5m gift Farage has argued that he did not need to declare the £5m because it was an exempt “personal, unconditional gift”. However, his explanation for why the money was given has changed over time. He initially told The Daily Telegraph that the money was to cover the cost of his personal security, citing a previous firebomb attack on his home. He later told broadcasters that he had “no obligation” to declare the payment because it was “purely private” and “wasn’t political in any sense at all”. More recently, he told The Sun that the money was a “reward for campaigning for Brexit”, while insisting that he “cannot be bought by anybody”. Last month, when asked to clarify what the money was for, he told the BBC: “It was an unconditional gift, I can spend it on cars if I want to. It’s entirely up to me but there is a specific reason for this. I have been physically the most attacked and endangered politician in Britain for now well over a decade, at every stage during that time when I’ve asked the state to help and support, most times they have point-blank refused.” He went on to say the money was for protection “until the day that I die”. Farage received the gift on 5 April, 2024, before he was elected as an MP, according to The Guardian. This week, the newspaper reported that he had allegedly told senior figures in Reform that he would need “a million a year” to cover lost earnings if he stood for Parliament in the 2024 general election, believing he would have to give up his GB News presenting role. The Guardian cited sources claiming this discussion took place in March 2024 shortly before he received Harborne’s money. Security arrangements for MPs and parliamentary candidates have been under wider scrutiny following the suspected murder of Ann Widdecombe. Earlier this week counter-terror police took over the case and are investigating whether the suspect may have targeted other Reform politicians. Separately, a man was arrested earlier this week for allegedly threatening to shoot Farage in a social media post. Senior Reform figures have argued that the state is not doing enough to protect them. The Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec), which oversees security arrangements for senior figures including members of the Royal Family, the prime minister and the home secretary, was brought into the assessment of threats faced by MPs in 2024. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has offered Farage a meeting with the chair of Ravec to discuss concerns about the safety of Reform politicians. Farage has said he will accept the invitation and discuss security arrangements for the party’s figures, including those who are not MPs. Reform has argued that the reduction in Farage’s state-provided protection strengthens the case for private funding, because the “inadequate and downgraded” package no longer matched the threat faced by Farage. The party said the revised package was offered shortly after the killing of US political activist Charlie Kirk, at a time when it argued threats against public figures on the right were increasing. A party spokesman said the revised offer represented a reduction of around 75 per cent from the protection Farage had previously received, adding that the Reform leader is “one of the most targeted politicians in Britain” and the one who goes out the most to meet the public on the campaign trail.