Reform UK has announced plans to close down the UK’s asylum system for a full parliamentary term – which is five years – if it were to enter government.
The party said all new asylum applications would be rejected and existing applications voided, with all claimants marked for deportation. It said no grants of humanitarian protection or refugee status would be made, while legal refugee routes and resettlement schemes would end.
Reform said it would also scrap the asylum tribunal system and would deport 90,000 people currently with appeal cases.
Labour chair Bridget Phillipson called the proposals a “clear sign of desperation and weakness”.
Reform said its existing plans to make migrants who have entered the UK illegally, overstayed a visa or originated from a safe country ineligible for asylum would effectively prevent any current asylum claimant “from ever having their case heard”.
The party said it would therefore “suspend the asylum system entirely for a full parliamentary term”.
A parliamentary term usually lasts five years unless an early UK general election is called.
Under further proposals, Reform said it would pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention to prevent legal challenges to its plans.
And the party said it would ban British visas for countries such as Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan if they refuse to allow deportation flights to land in their country.
For countries without a significant legal foreign national presence in the UK, the party said it would look at tariffs on goods and services for non-compliance.
Party leader Nigel Farage said the UK is “facing a national security emergency” and “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.”
He and Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf will formally announce the plans in a speech on Monday.
“We’ve got to prioritise the British people,” Yusuf said, pointing to Britons “dying totally avoidably waiting for emergency care” and young people “being forced to stay at home with their parents well into their 30s and 40s because they can’t afford to rent homes”.
He added: “We will not be returning people into harm, but we have to be honest about the fact that fraud is rampant.”