The Conservatives have been accused of “shamelessly copying Reform’s policies” over their plans to deport foreign criminals.
Kemi Badenoch’s party has announced they will be removing all foreign criminals convicted of anything over the most minor of offences, which would rocket deportation numbers from 6,000 to 40,000 a year.
The new plan, however, has been criticised by Reform as a duplication of their own policies.
Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf accused the Tories of “creating” the migrant crisis.
He said: “A Conservative government created this crisis. Now they’re shamelessly copying Reform’s policies. They haven’t factored in that no one trusts them to deliver.
“The British people will neither forget nor forgive the Tories for importing five million people during their 14 years in power, building just 455 prison places to cope, and overseeing a fourfold surge in foreign national offenders.
“They had every opportunity to fix it. They failed. Only Reform will deport every foreign criminal brought here by the Tories and Labour.”
Under the Tory proposals, automatic deportation would apply to any foreign national given a prison sentence or convicted of a criminal offence – this would exclude minor infractions such as parking tickets or failing to hold a TV licence.
Zia Yusuf accused the Tories of ‘shamelessly copying’ Reform’s policies
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The party said more than 21,000 serious foreign offenders who should have already been removed from the UK, are currently living in British communities.
This figure has risen by more than a fifth under Labour, it claimed.
Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary, said: “We must deport all foreign criminals – it’s that simple. If someone comes to Britain and commits a crime, once jail time is served, they must go.
“Labour continues to let serious foreign criminals roam our streets, and many go on to commit more serious crimes. Nobody should be surprised given Labour’s Home Secretary previously signed a letter demanding that all flights deporting Jamaican criminals be cancelled. Labour thinks the supposed rights of foreign criminals are more important than protecting the law-abiding British public. That is unjust and unfair.
Foreign criminal deportations would go up from 6,000 to 40,000, the Conservative Party has proposed
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“The next Conservative government will deport every foreign criminal, leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) so that lawyers can no longer keep them here, and hit any country that refuses to take its criminals back with visa sanctions and aid cuts. We will take deportations from under 6,000 a year to 40,000. We will not apologise for putting the safety of the British public first.”
Nigel Farage made similar proposals last month, saying Reform would send all foreign prisoners abroad to serve their sentences.
He floated El Salvador, Kosovo, Estonia and Lithuania as possible destinations.
The plans, Reform said, would free up more than 10,000 prison places, alongside 12,400 new “Nightingale” prison beds, which the party has pledged to build on Ministry of Defence land.
Reform UK floated the idea of sending foreign offenders to serve their sentences in El Salvador
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Mr Farage dismissed concerns over El Salvador’s human rights breaches, insisting a deal with the central American country would require it to meet “British standards”.
Labour criticised the proposal, saying it was unworkable as renting prison space overseas would take years to arrange.
As of June, there are 839 foreign national prisoners with no deportation orders.
A Nigerian national went to rape a 19-year-old in Wrexham after a tribunal ruled his removal from the UK would breach his right to family life.
Gift Oladele was jailed for two years in 2022 for the false imprisonment of a woman in Manchester and was subsequently served a deportation order.
After appealing the order, based on Article 8 of the ECHR, he then went on to rape a teenager as she walked home in Wrexham, north Wales.
A Zimbabwean paedophile was allowed to stay in Britain due to fears he would face “hostility” if he was sent back to his home country.
The man was jailed for five years for sexual offences against children and for distributing and possessing indecent images of minors.
He argued under Article 3 of the ECHR he would face “hostility” from the Zimbabwean authorities and was allowed to stay in the UK.
Central to the Conservatives’ plan is the UK withdrawing from the ECHR, which it argues is the main legal barrier preventing removals.
The party also said it would repeal the Human Rights Act, exit the Council of Europe’s anti-trafficking convention and stop modern slavery claims from blocking deportations.
Other measures include stripping British citizenship from naturalised dual nationals jailed for more than five years who have lived in the UK for under 15 years.
This would require police to routinely check the immigration status of anyone they arrest and expanding live facial recognition to 100 high-crime areas to help identify people in the country illegally.
Foreign criminals would also be permanently banned from returning to the UK, other than with the direct approval of the Home Secretary.
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