Reform UK will announce plans to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and create a new agency dedicated to deporting up to 288,000 people annually, the party's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf is set to say on Monday. The proposed UK Deportation Command would have capacity to detain 24,000 migrants at a time and operate five deportation flights per day.
In a speech, Yusuf will also call for ending indefinite leave to remain (ILR), replacing it with a renewable five-year work visa with a high salary threshold. This could affect tens of thousands of current ILR holders, who would lose their settled status. Labour has criticised the plan as an attack on people who have followed the rules and built their lives in the UK.
Yusuf will propose expanding stop-and-search powers, ending diversity initiatives in policing, and overhauling the Prevent programme to focus solely on Islamist extremism. He will also pledge to ban the conversion of churches into mosques and proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood.
Labour's chair Anna Turley called the policies divisive and 'fundamentally un-British', while the party has its own plans to increase the ILR eligibility period from five to ten years. Reform's proposals come amid ongoing debate over migration and border security in the UK.
