Reform UK would suspend asylum system for a full term

Reform UK has announced an election pledge to suspend the asylum system for a full parliamentary term if it enters government, according to the BBC. The party said all new asylum applications would be rejected and existing applications voided, with every claimant marked for deportation.

The plan would hit people whose cases are still pending, including claimants in more than 90,000 outstanding appeals, who the BBC reports would be deported. The Irish News reported that Nigel Farage was due to set out the plan on Monday.

What Reform UK’s asylum policy would change

Under the Reform UK asylum system suspension pledge, no grants of humanitarian protection or refugee status would be made. Reform would scrap the asylum tribunal system, which hears appeals, and close resettlement schemes. The Irish News reported that this would include the scheme Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said would reopen, and that anyone who had arrived under such schemes would be deported.

Home Office staff who now oversee asylum claims would be “reprioritised to reviewing and overturning previous refugee grants”, Reform said. Refugees granted asylum in the last five years would have their cases reviewed.

To prevent legal challenges, the party said it would pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention. Mr Farage told The Telegraph: “We cannot accept more asylum seekers while we still have no idea how many people are in the country illegally and the threat they pose.”

Who would be affected and the numbers

The immediate group is the claimants in the 90,000 or so outstanding appeals. Wider figures come from earlier announcements. In April Reform pledged a review of all asylum claims from the last five years, and the BBC says around 400,000 people would be liable for deportation under those plans. The table sets out the figures reported, none of which is a forecast of what would actually happen.

As a simple comparison, our own arithmetic shows that 600,000 deportations over five years would be 120,000 a year, or about 329 a day. The Conservative figure of 750,000 would be 150,000 a year. The two parties’ figures may not be measured on the same basis, so the comparison should be treated with caution.

Reform said it would pressure other countries to accept deportees through visa bans and tariffs on goods and services. Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan could face visa bans. If that failed, it would “apply further sanctions, including banning a country’s airlines from British airspace and their citizens from transit”.

UK asylum system suspension plans: the reaction

Labour chair Bridget Phillipson called the proposals a “clear sign of desperation and weakness”. She said: “The vast majority of British people will reject it as an assault on our common values.” She added that Labour would control immigration “not by abandoning the asylum system altogether”.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the plans “largely copy” his party’s policies. He pointed to banning claims by people who entered illegally, abolishing the immigration tribunal, ending Labour’s resettlement routes and leaving the ECHR. “Only the Conservatives have a serious and credible plan to fix our borders,” he said.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson said Reform and the Conservatives were “the architects of the failed asylum system”. He argued the UK should join the EU migration and asylum pact, which he said increases returns and spreads responsibility for asylum seekers across the EU.

What happens next

The pledge is a commitment for a future government, so nothing changes for existing claimants now. Reports so far do not give a date for the next general election, and they do not say how Reform would cost the plan or how many deportations could be carried out in practice.

The current government’s policy is different. In March Ms Mahmood said refugees would receive only temporary protection, reviewed every 30 months. In September she reopened the UK Resettlement Scheme, which the Home Office said would reopen immediately. Readers following the debate should watch for the full Reform policy document, any costings, and how the other parties respond with their own asylum plans.