Farage pledges five-year asylum suspension as Reform sets out deportation plan
Nigel Farage used a press conference at Hythe in Kent on Monday to promise that a Reform UK government would declare asylum applications in the system void, hear none of the around 90,000 outstanding asylum appeals and deport the claimants, reject new claims automatically and scrap legal resettlement routes, with Ukrainians the sole exception.
Nigel Farage has pledged to suspend the granting of asylum in Britain for up to five years if Reform UK wins the next general election, in the most far-reaching immigration proposal the party has set out.
Speaking at a press conference at Hythe on the Kent coast on Monday, the Reform leader said asylum applications already in the system would be declared void, the roughly 90,000 outstanding asylum appeals would not be heard and the claimants would be deported, new claims would be automatically rejected, and failed applicants would be returned to their home countries or to a safe third country.
"We want to get back to being a normal country," Farage said, "a country that detains and deports people that come illegally, as virtually every other country in the world does". Farage, who described the situation as a national security emergency in comments reported by The Telegraph, said a Reform government could impose tariffs, visa bans or airspace restrictions on countries that refuse to accept the return of their nationals.
We want to get back to being a normal country.Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader
Reform said it would scrap all legal routes for asylum resettlement, but exempt Ukrainians who fled to Britain after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Reporting of the launch also described plans to close a resettlement scheme that the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, recently said would reopen.
Labour called the plans "a clear sign of desperation and weakness", while the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, said the proposals largely copy Conservative ideas. Refugee charities have said the deportation plans would mean sending asylum seekers back to countries such as Afghanistan or Iran, where they could face persecution, torture and death.
The next general election is due in 2029, and immigration remains the issue British voters rank highest in opinion polls. In the year ending in June, Britain received 85,891 asylum applicants, a fall of 21 per cent on the same period a year earlier, with the largest numbers coming from Pakistan, Eritrea, Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan.
Reform UK led in the opinion polls until this summer, but police and parliamentary investigations into how the party is funded, together with Andy Burnham taking over as Labour prime minister, have since pushed it into second place. Reform denies breaking electoral law.
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