Reform UK has pledged to shut down Britain’s asylum system for an entire parliamentary term if the party wins power, rejecting all new applications, voiding cases already in the pipeline and marking an estimated 400,000 people for deportation. The announcement on Sunday intensifies an immigration arms race ahead of the next general election, with Labour and the Conservatives already promising tighter borders but stopping short of Reform’s wholesale suspension.
What Reform is proposing
Under the plan, Reform would scrap the asylum tribunal that hears appeals, leaving more than 90,000 outstanding appeals without a route to challenge removal. The party said it would pull the United Kingdom out of the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act and disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention so courts could not block mass deportations.
Reform framed the move as a national security emergency, arguing that ministers still do not know how many people entered the country illegally or what risks they pose. Party officials said they would pressure third countries to accept deportees through visa bans and tariffs on goods and services, a toolkit similar to measures other European governments have threatened but rarely applied at the scale Reform describes.
Who would be covered
The party’s count of roughly 400,000 people includes anyone granted asylum, anyone who overstayed a visa and nationals of countries a Reform-led government would designate as safe, regardless of individual circumstances. That breadth would sweep in resettled refugees, students whose visas expired during administrative backlogs and families with children born in Britain who have never held another status.
Conservative shadow ministers said much of the package mirrored their own proposals from a year earlier, including banning asylum claims from people who arrived illegally, abolishing the immigration tribunal and ending Labour’s humanitarian resettlement routes. Reform’s difference is timing and totality: a five-year pause on any protection rather than a phased tightening.
Labour’s narrower lane
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has already moved to offer only temporary refugee protection reviewed every 30 months, and the Home Office said the UK Resettlement Scheme would reopen with a focus on Afghan women and girls and Palestinians. Labour ministers argue they can reduce small-boat crossings without shredding international obligations, though Sunday’s Reform launch will force them to defend that balance on broadcast rounds all week.
Legal charities and refugee groups said Reform’s plan would breach multiple treaties and invite years of litigation even if Parliament passed enabling legislation. What is clear politically is that immigration has returned to the centre of Westminster debate at a moment when the prime minister is also facing questions on defence spending, Brexit-era security and local government finances. Reform’s bet is that a single, memorable promise — no asylum at all for a full term — will cut through the noise.