Reform pledges to review all asylum claims since 2021 if it wins power
Jennifer McKiernanPolitical reporter
Home Office/ PA Media
Reform UK has pledged an immediate review of all asylum claims from the last five years should the party win the next general election.
Around 400,000 people would be liable for deportation under the plans, which would target anybody granted asylum, overstaying a visa, or from a country deemed safe by a Reform-led government.
The current Labour government has already announced major crackdowns on immigration, including disrupting human trafficking gangs, emptying asylum hotels and increasing the time before indefinite leave to remain is granted.
Conservatives claimed Reform was copying their policies “but without the detail”, and Liberal Democrats called it an “impractical farce” of a policy.
Reform, led by Nigel Farage, has previously announced it would bar anyone arriving on a small boat, and suggested this could mean 600,000 deportations over five years.
The party also wants the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to make removals easier and abolish the right to permanent settlement in the UK after five years.
Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said his party would “do what it takes to restore justice” in the UK.
“For years, Tory and Labour governments have presided over an invasion of Britain,” he claimed.
“Instead of upholding the law, they have rewarded those who broke it by entering Britain illegally. Reform will reverse this,” he added.
But a Labour Party spokesperson blamed the previous Conservative governments, adding Labour was “finally bringing down” immigration numbers.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had taken “decisive action” to cut small boat crossings and “restore control of our borders after the Tories’ failed open borders experiment”, they said.
“We have already stopped over 42,000 illegal migrants attempting to cross the Channel since the general election,” they added.
“We have removed or deported nearly 60,000 people with no right to be here.”
Conservative Chris Philp, shadow home secretary, accused Reform of badly copying his own proposals.
“The Conservatives have already proposed a detailed borders plan to pull out of the ECHR and completely ban asylum claims by illegal immigrants,” he said.
“Instead, we would deport them within a week of arrival.”
He said the Tories would deport 150,000 immigrants each year with no right to be in the UK and added: “Reform is slowly catching up with our ideas – but without the detail that will ensure it works in practice.”
Liberal Democrat immigration and asylum spokesman Will Forster attacked Reform’s “hostile, headline-grabbing” plans that he said would “do absolutely nothing to tackle our broken asylum system”.
“The backlog of cases is already sky high thanks to the mess the Conservatives left us in,” he said.
“Reviewing five years worth of asylum grants is an impractical farce that will just slow down the process even more.”
His party has called for temporary processing centres to be set up to clear the asylum backlog within six months so that “those with a right to be here to get on with their lives and support themselves, and those without can be swiftly returned”.
The Greens have been contacted for comment.
