Nigel Farage today vowed to deport 600,000 asylum seekers within five years if Reform UK wins the next general election.
In a speech in Oxfordshire this morning, Mr Farage unveiled his party’s ‘Operation Restoring Justice’ proposals to tackle the Channel migrant crisis.
He warned anger among Brits over an ‘invasion’ of the South Coast by small boats represented a ‘genuine threat to public order.
Speaking at London Oxford Airport, Mr Farage argued the only way to stop migrants arriving in Britain via dinghies was by ‘detaining and deporting absolutely anyone’.
‘The mood in the country around this issue is a mix between total despair and rising anger,’ he said.
‘And I would say this, that without action, without somehow the contract between the Government and the people being renewed, without some trust coming back, then I fear deeply that that anger will grow.
‘In fact, I think there is now, as a result of this, a genuine threat to public order.’
Mr Farage is vowing – if he becomes PM – that all those arriving in Britain on small boats and via other illegal routes will be detained and then deported.
He claimed some 600,000 asylum seekers could be deported in the first term of a Reform government under the party’s plans.
Mr Farage confirmed women and children would be among those detained under his party’s plans, while he was sanguine about failed asylum seekers being tortured or murdered if they were deported after entering the UK illegally.
Reform is pledging to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and scrap the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the convention in UK law.
It is promising to sign migrant returns deals with countries such as Afghanistan and Eritrea, but also house migrants in ‘third countries’ such as Rwanda and Albania.
Under Reform’s plans, British overseas territories such as Ascension Island will be used as a ‘fallback’ option for sending migrants.
Mr Farage accused the UK and French governments of ‘colluding’ in support of criminal activity by failing to tackle people-smuggling gangs operating across the Channel.
The Reform leader said that ‘despite the £800million we’ve given the French, even as we speak, there are French naval vessels escorting these boats across to a 12-mile line’.
He said from there ‘they will be picked up by Border Force or our volunteers at the RNLI if it’s a busy day and Border Force simply can’t cope’.
‘And now what happens is the French give them all life jackets and when they’re picked up by Border Force, Border Force give the life jackets back to the French so they can re-use them on the next journey,’ Mr Farage added.
‘We are literally witnessing two governments colluding in their support of criminal activity.’
Mr Farage highlighted how 650 people arrived in Dover on Bank Holiday Monday, with the number of small boat arrivals soon to hit 52,000 since Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister last July.
He warned the Channel migrant crisis represented a ‘national security threat’, while he also said there were ‘cultural’ reasons behind public anger over illegal arrivals.
Recent weeks have seen protests outside asylum hotels across Britain, including at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex.
Mr Farage said: ‘I suppose the growing anger in the country in the course of the last few weeks is a cultural one.
‘In the sense that many of these young men come from countries in which women aren’t even second-class citizens.
‘And frankly the public have now just had enough. What began as a protest of mothers and concerned citizens outside the Bell Hotel in Epping has now spread right across the country.
‘All of it really poses one big fundamental question. Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of women and children being safe on our streets?
‘Or are you on the side of outdated international treaties backed up by a series of dubious courts?’
The Reform leader said his party’s plans to deport asylum seekers en masse would save ‘tens and possibly hundreds of billions of pounds’ for UK taxpayers.
He also claimed ‘the boats will stop coming within days’, if Reform won power at the next general election and implemented their plans.
‘Our proposals will save over the course of the next decades tens and possibly even hundreds of billions of pounds,’ Mr Farage said.
‘By the end of a first parliament, we will have saved a huge amount of money.’
He added: ‘The only way we will stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone that comes via that route.
‘And if we do that, the boats will stop coming within days, because there will be no incentive to pay a trafficker to get into this country.
‘If you come to the UK illegally, you will be detained and deported and never, ever allowed to stay, period. That is our big message from today.’
Mr Farage used his speech this morning to pledge that hundreds of thousands of people will be deported by a Reform government, with five charter flights taking off every day.
There will also be a ‘deportation app’ for migrants who wish to leave voluntarily, and they will be given £2,500 and a free flight home.
He set out details of the costs of his party’s plans, with Reform believing it will cost as little as £10billion to implement.
A government headed by Mr Farage would introduce emergency legislation known as the Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill to bar those arriving by small boat from claiming asylum.
Leaving the ECHR is a demand now even being made by Labour MPs and grandees as they increasingly fear Sir Keir’s failure to implement radical action over the Channel migrant crisis will lose him the next election.
A new British Bill of Rights, which would apply only to British citizens and those with a legal right to live here, would replace the Human Rights Act under Reform’s plans – and refer to the protection of free speech and liberty rather than human rights.
Zia Yusuf, one of Reform’s most senior figures and the party’s former chairman, said Reform would form a ‘deportation command’ and a ‘data fusion centre’, which would draw together data from the police, Home Office, NHS, DVLA, HMRC and banks.
‘This will allow deportation command to relentlessly track down and detain all those who entered our country illegally,’ Mr Yusuf said.
He said a Reform government would stop aid and visas from being issued to countries if they refuse to take part in a returns scheme for illegal migrants.
Mr Farage told the Daily Mail last night that if Reform came into power, it would aim to build migrant detention centres on military sites within 18 months.
They would house 24,000 people and detainees would not be allowed to leave or claim bail, he added.
Labour minister Matthew Pennycook this morning said it was not in Britain’s national interest to withdraw from the ECHR.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch today accused Reform UK of ‘copying our homework’ with its immigration proposals.
Mrs Badenoch said the only workable parts of Nigel Farage’s pledges had come from Conservative policy but that Reform was ‘not doing the thinking’ required to deliver.
The Tory leader refused to say how many migrants a new Conservative administration would seek to deport when questioned about Mr Farage’s ambition to remove up to 600,000 people over the course of a parliament, insisting ‘it’s not about the numbers’.
‘It’s not about the numbers, it is about making sure that we control our borders and we get all the people who are breaking our laws and coming here illegally out of the country,’ Mrs Badenoch told journalists on a visit to Chelmsford on Tuesday.
‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we put out a deportation Bill in May. The stuff that actually works in what he said has come from there.’
The Tory ‘Bill’ announced earlier this year included plans to disapply the Human Rights Act from all immigration-related matters and ‘introducing powers to deport all foreign criminals’.
Mrs Badenoch has ordered a review into whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which she said would report back before the Tory party conference next month.
Asked about Mr Farage’s pledge to leave the treaty, she said ‘saying you’re going to leave the ECHR is not a plan.’
She said that it will have an impact on things such as the Good Friday Agreement and needs to be done in a way that does not destabilise the country or economy.
Mrs Badenoch added: ‘We need to make sure that anyone who comes to our country illegally is deported. We have experience in government of finding some of these deportations difficult.
‘That is why we had the third country deterrent, which was the Rwanda plan. Some countries will not co-operate.
‘But from what Reform has announced today, they haven’t done the thinking, they’ve just copied our homework, but they don’t understand the reasons behind them.’
He told GB News this would put the UK ‘in the same camp’ as countries such as Russia and Belarus.
‘But that is not to say we don’t think the convention needs reform, we’re making the case for reform in Europe,’ he added.
‘And we’re looking at how the convention is implemented domestically, in the case of Article 8, and how that can be abused to frustrate our laws.
‘It’s not a case of saying the convention needs to remain untouched, but we don’t think it’s in our national interest to withdraw from or suspend it.
‘Not least because it underpins a series of incredibly important agreements, including the Good Friday Agreement.’
Mr Pennycook, the housing minister, compared Reform’s plans to tackle illegal migration to ‘something put together on the back of a fag packet’.
He told Sky News that Mr Farage’s idea of securing returns agreements with countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Eritrea is ‘for the birds’.
‘What happens if returns agreements are not secured with Eritrea or Sudan?’, he asked.
‘Where do the planes go? What does Reform think is going to happen in the case of Iran, a country that we’re currently sanctioning, they’re just going to agree a returns agreement?
‘So we will get on with the practical, hard-headed, unglamorous, step-by-step actions we’re taking to bear down on this problem, rather than the gimmicks being put forward by Reform and other parties.’
He added: ‘Reform can stoke anger. We will get on with the job of putting in place the necessary practical measures that will see net migration come down over this parliament and the gangs and the boat problem tackled.’
Mr Pennycook also confirmed that the first small boats arrivals have been detained to send back to France under the Government’s ‘one in, one out’ migrant deal.
Earlier, Mr Farage had accused Sir Keir of siding with international courts in an opinion piece published in the Telegraph, writing: ‘The time has come to put this country first. This is all a question of priorities.
‘Is Keir Starmer on the side of the British people, national security and protecting women and girls – or is he on the side of outdated international treaties and human rights lawyers?’.
Sir Keir earlier this year took the unprecedented step of declaring in the Commons that an immigration judge made the ‘wrong decision’ by granting a Palestinian family the right to live in the UK.
In the wake of the row, his Government pledged to restrict the ability of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals to avoid deportation by claiming the Article 8 right to a family life.
And at the weekend the Home Office said it would speed up asylum appeals by getting rid of some judge-led tribunals.
The Tories claimed that Reform’s plans were based on many of their own proposals.
When they were in power, the Conservatives passed a law banning small boat migrants from claiming asylum and signed a deal to deport some to Rwanda, although no flights ever took off.
The Tory government was also the first to consider sending new arrivals to Ascension Island, a remote territory in the South Atlantic.
And in May, having lost the election, the party published a Deportation Bill that would mean ‘automatic deportation for anyone to arrives in the country illegally’ as well as disapplying the Human Rights Act from immigration cases.
Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has also launched a review which is expected to conclude that Britain should withdraw from the ECHR.
And as far back as 2006 under David Cameron, the Tories had been proposing to replace Labour’s Humans Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, an idea also now being proposed by Reform.
A similar Bill to repeal the Human Rights Act was put forward by then-justice secretary Dominic Raab in 2022, before being scrapped by Liz Truss during her short tenure as prime minister.
Chris Philp, the Tory shadow home secretary, said: ‘Nigel Farage is simply re-heating and recycling plans that the Conservatives have already announced.
‘Earlier this year we introduced and tabled votes on our Deportation Bill in Parliament, detailing how we would disapply the Human Rights Act from all immigration matters, and deport every illegal immigrant on arrival.
‘Months later, Reform have not done the important work necessary to get a grip on the immigration crisis and instead have produced a copy and paste of our proposals.
‘Only Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives are doing the real work needed to end this scourge – with further, detailed plans to be announced shortly.’
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: ‘Farage’s plan crumbles under the most basic scrutiny.
‘The idea that Reform UK is going to magic up some new places to detain people and deport them to, but don’t have a clue where those places would be, is taking the public for fools.
‘Of course Nigel Farage wants to follow his idol Vladimir Putin in ripping up the human rights convention. Winston Churchill would be turning in his grave.
‘Doing so would only make it harder for each of us as individuals to hold the Government to account and stop it trampling on our freedoms.’