Children and mothers would not be exempt from plans by Reform UK to immediately deport ۹۰,۰۰۰ asylum seekers and impose a five-year ban on people being granted asylum.
The party’s most hardline immigration policies to date were condemned by refugee charities and others as “unworkable” and an abandonment of Britain’s tradition of helping victims of war after they were announced by Nigel Farage on Monday.
New claims would be automatically rejected and failed applicants would be returned either to their home countries or a safe third country while a Reform government would impose tariffs, visa bans or airspace restrictions on countries refusing to accept the return of asylum seekers.
Asked if children would be exempt, Farage told a press conference in Kent: “If you allow Palestinian or Afghan women to come as well as children, that may well sound compassionate given the circumstances in that country. However, as soon as you do that you open the door to family reunions, to husbands coming, to partners coming, before you know it you have plenty of young men coming as well.”
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said last month that approximately a quarter of arrivals under the reopened UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS) will consist of Afghan women and girls fleeing Taliban rule and Palestinians who have fled Gaza.
Appearing in front of a replica of the type of inflatable boat that he said was now being used to cross the Channel, Farage said a Reform government would also review the status of anyone granted asylum since ۲۰۲۴.
Those coming from countries deemed safe by a Reform home secretary would lose their permission to remain in the UK, while all legal resettlement routes would also be abolished, except for those set up for Ukrainians in the wake of the full-scale Russian invasion in ۲۰۲۲.
A ۱۷-page document published by the party on Monday envisages the “embedding” of immigration enforcement throughout the state, and effectively society, by including immigration checks in food safety, housing and licensing inspections. People targeted for deportation would be identified from data on water or electricity usage, “aerial imaging” and complaints from neighbours.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s would-be home secretary, said Reform planned to deport “north of ۱ million people” but insisted the party was “not in the business of sending people to be killed or tortured”, telling the press conference there would be “third country options” for “edge cases”.
However, the Refugee Council said that closing Britain’s asylum system would “cause chaos” and desperate people who would still arrive on the country’s shores would be driven underground instead of entering an orderly system.
Jon Featonby, the chief policy analyst at the charity, said: “These unworkable proposals would see us abandon our proud tradition of offering safety to victims of war, which our ancestors established in response to the horrors of world war two.”
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The Labour party’s chair, Bridget Phillipson, said the Reform UK leader was “casting around for more and more extreme policies” as he faced questions about his own finances and the threat posed by rivals Restore Britain, which appeared to have cost his party the opportunity of finishing third in the St Pancras and Holborn byelection.
Phillipson said that Labour could “control immigration and get numbers down with serious action, not by abandoning the asylum system altogether”.
The new Reform policy was described by Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, as an “eye catching” move that was perhaps aimed at stemming the growth of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party on Farage’s right.
Tryl added that a policy to stop asylum entirely runs contrary to the desire of a majority of Reform voters, of whom only ۱۴% wanted to see a cessation of Britain welcoming people fleeing persecution and war.
