Reform UK has set out a proposal under which the UK's asylum system would be suspended throughout an entire parliamentary term, contingent on the party taking office. Under the plan, every pending asylum claim would be cancelled and any new applications turned away, with those who had sought protection placed on a deportation list — a set of measures Reform described as amounting to the functional shutdown of the asylum process.
Under the Reform proposal, the tribunal system handling asylum appeals would be abolished, leaving more than 90,000 people with cases still pending subject to deportation. Neither humanitarian protection nor refugee status would be extended under the terms set out in the announcement.
Nigel Farage, the Reform party leader, described the UK as facing a national security emergency, arguing that no further asylum seekers could be admitted while the number of people in the country without authorisation — and any associated risks — remained unquantified. The party also set out plans to redeploy Home Office staff currently handling asylum claims to a programme of reviewing and potentially reversing previously granted refugee status.
Visa restrictions and trade levies on goods and services were among the tools the party outlined as means of compelling other nations to take back individuals earmarked for removal from the UK. Six nations — Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan, and Sudan — are listed among the countries that travel restrictions under the proposed measures would cover. The announcement noted that, should those measures fall short, Reform would move to impose additional penalties — among them, barring the airlines of the relevant country from operating in British airspace and preventing that country's nationals from passing through in transit.
Where no receiving country can be found or where return to a person's home country is judged unsuitable, Reform has outlined plans to pursue agreements with third-party nations to handle such deportation cases. Separately, Reform set out proposals to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act 1998, and set aside the 1951 Refugee Convention as a way of clearing legal obstacles to its plans.
A promise made by Reform in April committed the party, upon winning the next general election, to launching an immediate review covering all asylum claims lodged during the preceding five years. Estimates put the number of people who could face removal at roughly 400,000, drawn from those who received asylum, remained in the country beyond their visa terms, or hold nationality in a nation a Reform-led administration might classify as safe. In a prior statement, the party set out a policy of turning back all those who had crossed by small boat, and put the number of people who might consequently face removal over a five-year period at around 600,000.
Commitments to overhaul asylum arrangements have come from both the Labour Party and the Conservatives. Bridget Phillipson, who chairs Labour, attributed the proposals to political weakness, arguing that cutting off protection for those escaping conflict and persecution might be seen by Reform as a way of outflanking parties on the right — yet she maintained that the majority of people across Britain would regard such a stance as a departure from values they hold in common.
Phillipson also characterised Farage as someone advancing increasingly radical policy positions while facing scrutiny over finances and the rival party Restore Britain. She argued that Labour's record demonstrates immigration figures can be brought down through enforcement of existing rules, rather than by dismantling the asylum system or adopting what she described as the most uncompromising positions in the debate.
The Conservative shadow home secretary maintained that the proposals largely duplicated his party's existing platform and that only the Conservatives possessed a workable plan for managing border pressures. The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson took a different view, arguing that both Reform and the Conservatives had helped construct the asylum framework now attracting criticism and stood to benefit politically from its weaknesses, including through announcements of the kind Farage had made.
Under a policy announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in March, those granted refugee status would receive only temporary protection, subject to reassessment at 30-month intervals. That same month, a programme allowing refugees to settle in the UK was brought back, with the stated aim that providing sanctioned routes for entry would reduce the number of people making the crossing by small boat. Of those taken in under the UK Resettlement Scheme — set to reopen without delay, the Home Office stated — estimates placed Afghan women and girls together with Palestinians at close to one in four of the total intake.
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, argued that Reform's proposals closely resemble the position the Conservative Party held roughly a year earlier, covering measures such as barring asylum applications from those who arrived without authorisation, scrapping the immigration tribunal, withdrawing Labour's resettlement pathways, and withdrawing from the ECHR. A Conservative Party pledge had previously committed civil servants to carrying out the removal of 750,000 people without legal authorisation over a five-year period.
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Calum Wilkinson put forward the case that entering the EU's migration and asylum pact — a framework under which member states share responsibility for asylum seekers while also increasing removals of those who arrive through unofficial routes — would bring greater consistency and fairness to how the UK handles migration.
