A former Immigration Minister has slammed the Home Office for its “defeatist” attitude after insiders told GB News the department lacks the resources to deliver Nigel Farage’s ambitious promises.
In its pitch to voters, Mr Farage’s party has vowed to identify, detain and remove up to 600,000 asylum seekers from Britain within five years, in what has been billed as the most radical immigration overhaul in modern British political history.
But sources with knowledge of Reform UK’s pledges have questioned whether the Home Office, which is also responsible for policing, counter-terrorism and civil registrations, can bring Mr Farage’s vision to life.
Reacting to the GB News exclusive, Kevin Foster told the People’s Channel: “We’ve seen before, where we see sort of briefings behind the scenes that things can’t be done, but actually it is possible to do what Nigel Farage is talking about.
“The Home Office already is removing about 35,000 people a year. That’s nudging up towards 40,000.”
However, he added he believes Reform needs to “talk a bit more” about the choices they would make to achieve their goals.
He said: “You can see, for example, what President Trump’s administration did, where they came in sorting the southern border was their top priority.
“And that meant choices across things like trade, foreign affairs, and for example, how things like domestic courts work, including parliament, what is going to be their priorities.
“It also means redeploying Home Office resources like decision-making teams.”
Unveiling his “Operation Restoring Justice” last year, Mr Farage said a Reform UK Government would turn disused military bases into detention centres to hold around 24,000 people at a time, strike “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, and “scale up” deportation charter flights to five a day.
He also promised to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), create a British Bill of Rights to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes, and enforce lifetime re-entry bans to “secure our borders”.
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