Reform UK has pledged to suspend the UK asylum system for a full parliamentary term if it enters government, rejecting all new asylum applications, voiding existing applications and marking all claimants for deportation. The party said it would scrap the asylum tribunal system that hears appeals, immediately deport more than 90,000 people with outstanding appeals and make no grants of humanitarian protection or refugee status. Reform would seek to remove legal barriers by pulling the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and disapplying the 1951 Refugee Convention. Nigel Farage described the UK as "facing a national security emergency" and said the measures respond to people in the country illegally. Reform said Home Office staff would be reprioritised to review and overturn previous refugee grants, and around 400,000 people could be liable for deportation under the party’s broader plans. The party also proposed using visa bans, tariffs, airline bans and transit restrictions against countries such as Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan to pressure them to accept deportees, and negotiating with third countries in "extreme cases." Labour chair Bridget Phillipson condemned the proposals as a "clear sign of desperation and weakness," Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said they "largely copy" Conservative policies, and Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson accused Reform and the Conservatives of being architects of the failed asylum system.
