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Rachel Reeves says Reform UK's immigration plans have 'no basis in reality'
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has claimed the Reform UK immigration plans have “no basis in reality”.
In an interview this morning, asked about Farage’s claims that he could save taxpayers £234bn by abolishing indefinite leave to remain (see 10.52pm), she said:
The numbers that Reform have come out with overnight have already begun to disassemble.
And, look, I want to bring down illegal migration. This government is bringing down migration. We have sent a record number of people who have no right to be in our country home.
We’re reducing the use of hotels for asylum seekers and we’ve made an agreement with France to send people back who come over on small boats.
Those are all steps towards our ambitions to get a grip of this situation that we inherited.
It is a difficult challenge, I think everybody can see that, but simple gimmicks like those put forward by Reform that have no basis in reality and where the numbers just fall apart – that’s not the way to tackle a very serious issue, and this Labour government are getting on and doing that.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s press secretary accused Farage of fosterinng division. She said:
Every week Nigel Farage sets out unrealistic, unworkable and unfunded plans.
You’ve heard the prime minister talk about the politics of grievance that Reform thrives on.
They don’t want to tackle the issues facing the country, they want to foster division.
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SNP says Reform UK's plans for mass deportations 'desperate and despicable'
The SNP has described Reform UK’s plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain as despicable. In a statement, Pete Wishart, the party’s deputy leader at Westminster, said:
Nigel Farage’s latest plan for mass deportations is one more desperate and despicable attempt to blame migrants for the economic state of broken Britain. Farage’s plans would threaten the collapse of our NHS and would crash the economy all over again.
Instead of attacking migrants who staff our NHS, contribute to our economy and strengthen our society - the truth that Westminster politicians refuse to face is that Brexit broke Britain and Farage was the key architect of that disaster.
It is shameful that instead of calling out Farage, the Labour Party and Keir Starmer are determined to follow him. They followed Farage on Brexit and they are now following him on immigration.
Reeves claims second runway at Gatwick will bring down holiday costs
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has suggested that having a second runway at Gatwick could lead to cheaper holidays.
On a visit there this morning, she told journalists:
Today, this Government are backing a second runway here at Gatwick. That’s in addition to our commitments to a third runway at Heathrow, small modular reactors and a new nuclear power station in Suffolk, backing energy projects and transport projects right around the country.
This extra runway at Gatwick will mean that people going on holiday will have a greater choice of destinations, it will mean lower costs for a family holiday.
And it will also mean more good jobs paying decent wages through this injection of cash into our economy.
Here is our story on the announcement by Nadeem Badshah and Jasper Jolly.
SNP appoints Callum McCaig as its 4th chief executive in 3 years
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
The Scottish party has appointed a former MP and special adviser to Nicola Sturgeon as its new chief executive, after the incumbent quit on health grounds.
Callum McCaig, the former MP for Aberdeen South and a former leader of Aberdeen council, will become its fourth chief executive in three years after the most turbulent period in the party’s history.
The SNP announced on Sunday he had taken over after Carol Beattie, a former Stirling council leader, resigned “due to personal health reasons”. She was appointed in October 2024 after Murray Foote, a former editor of the Daily Record, quit as chief executive in a row over transparency on its membership figures after 14 months in the post.
McCaig faces the significant challenge of preparing the SNP for what is likely to be a bruising Holyrood election contest, with Scottish Labour facing the increasingly difficult task of ending the SNP’s nearly 20-year-long domination of Scottish politics.
After being humiliated by Labour in the 2024 general election, losing 38 of its 48 Westminster seats, in June the SNP was again surprisingly beaten by Labour for the Holyrood seat of the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in a byelection the polls showed and pundits assumed would be a straightforward win for the SNP.
Alongside the impending trial of Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s ex-husband, for alleged embezzlement during his 22-year tenure as SNP chief executive, the party has seen a steep fall in its membership, down from 126,000 at its peak to 56,000, and much dicier finances.
Its 2024 accounts showed a £455,000 deficit, driven largely by election costs, but also falling revenues. General election years are traditionally periods when party coffers swell with donations: in 2024 its total income fell to £4.5m from £4.7m in the previous year.
In the run-up to Murrell’s arrest in April 2023, the party was riven by bitter factional disputes over transparency and financial accountability, with treasurers and members of its finance committee quitting, which in part fueled the police investigation which led to Murrell’s arrest. The SNP’s auditors, Johnson Carmichael, also quit after more than a decade in the role.
Swinney has been credited with restoring stability to the party’s management and governance, but the challenge of preparing for the 2026 Holyrood elections remains significant. The SNP’s once-feared electoral machine now appears out-dated and underpowered.
Lib Dems call for British laws to be 'Trump-proofed' to stop ministers lobbying on behalf of foreign governments
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is a senior Guardian political correspondent.
The Liberal Democrats have called for new measures to stop government ministers lobbying on behalf of foreign powers in yet another attack on Nigel Farage and Reform at the party’s conference in Bournemouth.
It came in a speech by Calum Miller, the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, who billed as a way of “Trump-proofing” the UK. Attacks on the US president have been another repeated refrain at the gathering.
Miller, who was a senior civil servant before entering politics, cited the example of Whitehall officials pushing golf bosses for the 2028 Open championship to take place at the Trump-owned Turnberry course, saying the claims needed to be investigated.
But he also took aim at Farage, saying:
We must Trump-proof our politics – especially in light of people like Farage, already measuring the curtains in No 10, who care more about what that office could do for them, than what it can do for this country.
The Lib Dems have previously accused Farage of prioritising Trump’s interests over those of the UK, such as an appearance earlier this month before a congressional hearing on censorship at which the Reform UK agreed with Republican members about what he called the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK.
The Lib Dems have called Farage a “plastic patriot”, to the extent of producing a Farage-type Lego figure labelled as such as a gift to journalists attending the conference.
Briefings by party officials have repeatedly noted what the party says is an increasing amount of direct competition between the Lib Dems and Reform in council byelections, especially in the north of England, as support for Labour and the Conservatives drops away.
Tories claim Reform's indefinite leave to remain plans 'half-baked and unworkable' version of their own
The Conservatives have described Reform UK’s plan to get rid of indefinite leave to remain as a “half-baked and unworkable” version of their own policies in this area.
In a statement, Chris Philp, the home secretary, said:
Reform UK are once again copying Conservative ideas, but in a way that is half-baked and unworkable. They lift our policies but strip away the detail that makes them enforceable. Mass low-skill migration carries real fiscal costs – in housing, welfare, and public services – which is why Britain needs a system that rewards contribution and stops abuse …
The Conservatives have already tabled detailed amendments in parliament to reform indefinite leave to remain.
We will double the residency requirement for indefinite leave to remain to 10 years, make ILR conditional on genuine economic contribution, block ILR for anyone with a criminal record, ensure there is no access to benefits pre-ILR. And we will go further, we will end automatic citizenship routes, impose a hard, legally binding cap on annual legal migration set by parliament, and ensure temporary work visas are not renewed if people are unemployed or in low-paid work.
Rachel Reeves says Reform UK's immigration plans have 'no basis in reality'
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has claimed the Reform UK immigration plans have “no basis in reality”.
In an interview this morning, asked about Farage’s claims that he could save taxpayers £234bn by abolishing indefinite leave to remain (see 10.52pm), she said:
The numbers that Reform have come out with overnight have already begun to disassemble.
And, look, I want to bring down illegal migration. This government is bringing down migration. We have sent a record number of people who have no right to be in our country home.
We’re reducing the use of hotels for asylum seekers and we’ve made an agreement with France to send people back who come over on small boats.
Those are all steps towards our ambitions to get a grip of this situation that we inherited.
It is a difficult challenge, I think everybody can see that, but simple gimmicks like those put forward by Reform that have no basis in reality and where the numbers just fall apart – that’s not the way to tackle a very serious issue, and this Labour government are getting on and doing that.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s press secretary accused Farage of fosterinng division. She said:
Every week Nigel Farage sets out unrealistic, unworkable and unfunded plans.
You’ve heard the prime minister talk about the politics of grievance that Reform thrives on.
They don’t want to tackle the issues facing the country, they want to foster division.
Farage's press conference on abolising indefinite leave to remain - snap verdict
Labour is arguing that Nigel Farage’s policy announcement has fallen apart because the details don’t stack up. (See 10.52am.) That won’t bother the Reform UK leader. As he showed at the press conference, he enthusiastically embraces controversy, and, like Donald Trump, he is quite happy to leverage chaos and outrage as a way maximising the attention grab.
Farage was interesting in landing two big-picture messages: that legal immigration has been bad for the economy of the UK, contrary to mainstream economic thinking; and that Reform will go much further than other parties by getting rid of indefinite leave to remain, requiring “hundreds of thousands” of people to leave or face deportation.
On the first point, here is a chart showing why economists and politicians have for years regarded controlled immigration as an economic benefit. Put simply, native Britons are a drain on the taxpayer until they start working (because they have to be educated etc, while paying no tax), while migrants normally arrive as working-age adults. This chart, from a Migration Observatory report, says that it is only if an average-wage migrant worker lives to be 92 or older that they become a net cost to the taxpayer.
Farage is arguing that this consensus view is wrong. But he is basing this claim on a figuure in a Centre for Policy Studies report that has been withdrawn by the thinktank.
Jonathan Portes, the professor and former government economist, has written a detail critique of the CPS paper and he has posted a link to it on Bluesky.
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Portes argues that, if the CPS had properly interpreted the OBR date, they would have concluded that there would be a net fiscal benefit of about £125bn from the migrants due to get indefinite leave to remain in the next few years.
Farage’s second aim was to publicise a policy that would commit a Reform UK government to mass deportatations of a kind never tried by a government in recent times. Reform says that it will not just get rid of indefinite leave to remain for future applicants; it will rescind it for people who currently qualify.
Understandably, there were a lot of questions about the essential unfairness of retrospective legislation of this kind, and whether Farage would be happy to see pensioners, or Ukrainians, deported as a result. Farage relished the row. “You talk to me about a sense of fair play,” he told one reporters. “Yes, you’re quite right, a fair play to British people who’ve been priced out of the market.”
But it remains to be seen whether Farage will remain committed to this aspect of the policy. He has a track record of turning up to events like this and making provocative announcements, only for the more extreme bits to be dropped soon afterwards. Stopping small boats in two weeks? That turned out to mean two weeks after a Reform government passed the legislation (which could be months after a general election). And when the party said at one of these press conferences child asylum seekers would be swiftly deported under its plans, that idea was dropped within 24 hours.
If Farage does row back a bit, he will get more publicity, the chance to sound a tiny bit more reasonable – while still leaving his party with a policy that would jolt British immigration policy in a more extreme direction than anything seen in decades.
EU nationals in UK with settled status won't be affected by plan to scrap indefinite leave to remain, Reform says
During the press conference, Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s head of policy and head of government efficiency, said that the plan to revoked indefinite leave to remain would not cover EU citizens who are allowed to remain in the UK permanently under the settled status scheme agreed after Brexit.
When asked if they would be covered, Yusuf said:
The answer is no, in terms of EU settled status.
But there is a caveat, There are a lot of EU nationals in this country you who are drawing on universal credit. So you can expect Nigel [Farage’s] government to open negotiations with the European Union specifically about the welfare aspect.
But, as Nigel has said time and again, the big issue we’re talking about here is the non-EU numbers.
The final question came from Jane Merrick from the i, who asked if a Reform UK government would derecognise Palestine. Farage replied:
I think that Starmer was completely wrong to do that. You can’t reward terrorists like Hamas. And even though he tried to caveat what he said, the fact is that right at the moment Hamas and the Palestinian cause are inseparable, one for the other.
And how can you recognize a state if you don’t even know what the geographical boundaries of it would be?
Q: [From my colleague Eleni Courea] Will you revoke ILR from Ukrainians and Hong Kongers who have moved her under the government schemes to help those groups? And there are many people here on ILR who have been here more than a decade, and who have children. Will you split up families to remove them?
Farage gives a short reply:
800,000 people are due to qualify for indefinite leave to remain over the course of the next few years. This press conference is to say none of them will get it. Thank you.
That does not answer Eleni’s question.
Q: Have you done any modelling on how many businesses might close as a result of these plans?
Farage does not give an answer, but asks how many businesses have closed as a result of mass migration. In productive terms, mass migration has been “a disaster for this country”, he says.
It’s led to a change of culture that has been ruinous.
Farage says Reform has let some ex-Tories join because they 'understand error of their ways' and seek 'repentance'
Q: [From Aggie Chambre from LBC] If the Boris Johnson government had such a bad record on this, why are you letting ministers in that government who were very close to Johnson, like Jake Berry and Nadine Dorries, join your party?
Farage says Reform has accepted “one or two people that were in that government who understand the error of their ways and have come to us for repentance”
Q: [From Anna Gross from the FT] You said earlier that we don’t know how many migrants are claiming benefits. But in your Mail article, you said most are. Which is right?
Farage says his party is “firmly of the belief, with research backing it up” that just over 50% of those who are coming up as part of the “Boriswave” have not worked. He says his party has been trying to get proper figures on this from the government. He suggests the FT should try to get those numbers.
Sadiq Khan says Reform UK's plans to deport people working here legally 'unacceptable'
Q: Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has attacked your plans. What is your response?
Khan says:
Thousands of Londoners have indefinite leave to remain.
They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbours and colleagues, contributing hugely to our city.
Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.
Farage replies:
What about the ones that aren’t working?
What about the ones that have never worked and never will work?
What about having an honest debate about those we’ve let into this country, many of whom are great people? Fine, we understand that, but too many of whom are not.
Farage says he looks forward to debating this in the local elections in London next year.
Q: What about the impact on foreign workers in the City?
Farage says people working for Goldman Sachs will not have to worry about meeting the salary threshold Reform will set.
