Zia Yusuf to outline plan for deportation agency and exit from ECHR
Reform UK would create an ICE-style agency dedicated to deporting hundreds of thousands of people and end indefinite leave to remain (ILR), the party will say.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, is due to outline proposals to establish a UK Deportation Command with the capacity to detain 24,000 migrants at a time and remove up to 288,000 people annually on five flights a day.
The party would also leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and place a legal duty on the Home Secretary to remove illegal migrants.
Yusuf is expected to say: “For decades, the Tories and Labour have turned the other way while the very fabric of our society has been under assault. The social contract has not merely been broken; it’s been shattered. Under a Reform government, His Majesty’s parliament will be sovereign once again.
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“We will secure our borders, leave the ECHR, and deport those here illegally. My message to the British people is simple: I will secure our borders and make you feel safe.”
Reform would scrap ILR and replace it with a renewable five-year work visa with a high salary threshold. Tens of thousands of people with settled status could lose their right to remain in the UK under the plans.
Yusuf will argue that granting ILR leads to “a lifetime of living off the British taxpayer” because of access to benefits. However, ILR holders make up about 2.7% of all universal credit claimants, with at least a third of those in employment.
As of April 2024, there were approximately 2,500 immigration detention spaces in the UK. Experts have previously said that expanding capacity to 24,000 would involve considerable cost.
The speech will also propose banning the conversion of churches into mosques and funding a significant expansion of stop and search powers. Yusuf is expected to call for an end to diversity initiatives in police forces and outline a new approach to knife crime.
He will say: “I will take a zero-tolerance approach to Islamist extremism,” promising to overhaul the Prevent deradicalisation programme and redraw its mandate to focus on Islamist extremism. Reform would also seek to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood organisation.
The party says it would “protect British culture” and preserve Britain’s Christian heritage. Yusuf will state: “We will protect British culture, because a nation without a culture is not a nation at all. It is just an economic zone. We will preserve Britain’s Christian heritage and end the incendiary practice of converting churches into mosques or any other place of worship.”
Labour has criticised the proposals as divisive. Anna Turley, chair of the Labour Party, said the plans amounted to “a direct attack on settled families and fundamentally un-British”.
She added: “Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse nation, which stands in opposition to the kind of divisive politics stoked by Reform.”
Labour has also proposed changes to ILR. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said eligibility could be extended from five years to 10 years, with additional conditions attached.
Yusuf will directly blame the former prime minister Boris Johnson for rising net migration, accusing him of having “thrown open our borders”.
The proposals mark one of the most far-reaching migration policy platforms set out by Reform UK to date, combining structural changes to immigration status with expanded enforcement powers.