Nigel Farage makes bombshell foreign prisoners announcement_D

In response to Reform’s press conference, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “This isn’t a serious prison plan. Nigel Farage knows full well that renting prison places overseas would take years to arrange and does nothing to tackle the pressures we face now.

“While Reform chase headlines, this Labour government is getting on with the job – building 14,000 additional prison places and removing foreign criminals at pace. Almost 10,000 foreign criminals have been removed since the election, up 36% on the previous 21 months.

“Farage can try to change the subject all her likes, but he still needs to come clean about his secret £5 million “gift” from his crypto billionaire backer. The public deserves to know who is funding Reform, and why.”

This is the biggest migrant boat ever detected crossing the Channel.

Smugglers crammed a staggering 230 into a single boat, prompting fears there will soon “be thousands coming every single day”.

– Nigel Farage confirmed that Lee Anderson will lead a Reform UK delegation to El Salvador to discuss the party’s plan to send foreign national offenders to the South American country.

– He accused Labour and Andy Burnham of not having “the imagination” to solve the prison crisis.

– Zia Yusuf said Reform will oversee “the fastest expansion of the prison estate since the Victorian era” with new Nightingale jails for lower-level offenders, including shoplifting.

– Plans for pre-fabricated prisons to be quickly built across the country on old MoD land will boost local jobs and the economy.

The Tories hit out at the French after a record 230 migrants crossed the Channel in a single boat.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “This is now beyond a joke. The French authorities could easily have stopped a vessel this size from embarking in shallow waters.

“I recently saw for myself French Gendarmes standing by and doing nothing while illegal immigrants boarded in knee deep water. Shabana Mahmood is handing over £660 million of our money while this happens. It’s a disgrace.

“Out of touch Andy Burnham claims there is no problem. There clearly is. If he was serious, he would adopt the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR and deport all illegal immigrants within a week of arrival. Then the crossings would soon stop.”

Downing Street has criticised people-smuggling gangs “prepared to risk human lives for profit” after a record 230 migrants crossed the English Channel in a single boat.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said: “We’ve seen today some appalling images, haven’t we, of young babies being put into these unseaworthy craft, and they’re shocking images, and they show the reality behind the ruthless smuggling gangs that are prepared to risk human lives for profit.

“That’s exactly why the Government has signed a new payment-by-results deal with the French to prevent these perilous journeys from happening in the first place.

“As the Prime Minister has said, we’re not complacent and we are bearing down on these crossings, and that’s reflected in the joint action that’s prevented 47,000 attempted crossings since the election.”

Reform UK’s newly unveiled plans for Nightingale prisons will boost the local economy, Mr Farage has said.

The prefabricated prisons would be built on former MoD sites that have since fallen out of use, though they have not revealed any specific place names.

“What you’ll see around the country are former MoD sites that used to employ a lot of people where because those people have now been laid off, the local towns and villages have suffered economically really, really grievously,” Mr Farage said in response to a question from The Telegraph.

“A lot of these facilities are in very out of the way places, and I would put it to you that use of MoD land, that more employment and more money in the local economy, in some of those rural areas, is far less likely to meet with big objection than the plans that I saw for the last few governments, where basically green space land next to rural settlements was being proposed.”

Reform UK will unveil its defence spokesman before the party’s autumn conference in September, Mr Farage has announced.

“As we approach our conference, we will give you a defence spokesman,” he told journalists at today’s press conference. “We’ve transformed the look of the party in terms of the breadth of people that are able to go out and speak and do things for us. A new head of policy, a new policy team.

“We’ve moved forward a lot this year. Are there more gaps for me to fill? Yes, there are, but it’s very much a work in progress, and we will be ready.”

The UK’s Rwanda asylum plan – announced in April 2022 by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Priti Patel – “stood no chance of success” because the Government had no plans to leave the ECHR, which was the “first of many steps that you would need to take in order to do the things we are talking about”.

The failed plan – officially the Migration and Economic Development Partnership – aimed to deport asylum seekers arriving via unauthorised routes to Rwanda for processing. If approved, they would stay in Rwanda rather than return to the UK.

However, the plan was scrapped when Labour won the election, with Sir Keir Starmer declaring it “dead and buried” on his first full day in office.

Answering a question from Sky News, Mr Farage spoke on his claims that the small boat situation is getting worse

While a record 230 people crossed in a single boat last night, the overall number of crossings is down about 10,000 from the same period last year.

“I’ve always thought the boats would get bigger,” Farage claimed. “Yes, the overall numbers this year are down, but they’re still horrendous.

“And if I told the British people 10 years ago that tens of thousands of people – young men who discard their IDs into the sea at the 12-mile line, some of them are going to be terrorists – would come into Britain, you wouldn’t have believed me,” he added.

“So, whether we have fewer bad people thus far this year than last year, the situation is desperate.

“It should be declared a national security emergency.”

Mr Farage said the “real deterrent” this year has been the weather in the English Channel: “So the idea that we should be celebrating the numbers are not as extreme as last year, I’m sorry, I believe that’s for the birds.”

Only lower-level offenders such as shoplifters would be kept in Nightingale prisons, Mr Yusuf has said. Asked about possible security concerns of pre-fabricated buildings for jails, he said: “This is going to be a lower category of prisoner. These aren’t going to be rapists and murderers.

“They’re going to be people who have been convicted of things like shoplifting, for example. But absolutely, they will be secure.”

He added that the jails were “not going to be a summer camp” and that “provision of colour televisions might be to some degree at a premium”.

There is “one-third of a million hectares” of MoD land available for Nightingale-style prisons, according to Mr Yusuf.

He added that they will also call on the armed forces for assistance.

Answering questions from the media, Mr Yusuf said foreign national criminals who are sent to countries such as El Salvador “will not be able to return” to Britain after their release. This will require discussions with local governments, he added.

“The people you should be asking that question to are the leaders of their home countries,” he added.

“We live in a country that is becoming ever-more lenient on those who break our laws and ever-harsher on those who follow them,” Mr Yusuf.

“All that changes under a Reform Government,” he added.

Mr Yusuf has said that those who commit serious crimes, like murder and rape, will serve their full sentences.

He also reiterated Mr Farage’s comments on deporting “all” 10,000 foreign nationals in UK prisons to countries like El Salvador if their home countries will not send them back.

“This is a national emergency,” he said, as there is “not enough space in our prisons”.

Reform UK spokesperson Zia Yusuf has described Britain’s justice system as “broken”.

Reform will reverse Andy Burnham’s “soft on crime” changes to ensure “that dangerous criminals serve the entirety of their sentence”.

He also confirmed plans to build “Nightingale” prisons for 12,000 convicts on MoD land, inspired by the pop-up hospitals built quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This will be “the fastest expansion of the prison estate since the Victorian era,” he added.

According to Mr Farage, it will cost half as much to house a foreign national offender in El Salvador, South America, than it will in the UK, while giving more space to UK criminals.

He confirmed that Reform UK will send a party delegation to El Salvador to discuss the party’s plans to deport foreign offenders to the country to free up prison places in Britain.

Mr Farage said: “Lee Anderson and Vanessa Frake, former prison governor, they will both be visiting El Salvador soon.”

Farage described previous Tory governments as the “architects of this mess”, which Labour has inherited.

“Labour don’t appear to have the imagination or will to solve it,” he added.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has taken to the stage for this morning’s press conference, during which he described Great Britain as “lawless”.

“We are living through a breakdown of society,” he added.

“We are in no doubt, as a party, that Britain now is lawless. I guess the reason it’s so little discussed is that for the Labour and Conservative parties to enter into this debate, they would have to admit their own culpability.

“Whether it is the streets of London, where men dare not wear watches and women dare not wear jewellery, to what is happening and the constant living in fear that we see in our rural communities, everyone knows the state of law and order is considerably worse than it was five or 10 years ago.””

Media and activists are gathered at the London venue for Reform’s press conference where Nigel Farage will make a major announcement

Reform UK has pledged to deport all foreign nationals from Britain’s prisons, with discussions reportedly under way to free up space by sending offenders to El Salvador should the party gain power.

Unveiling Reform’s prisons policy late on Sunday, Zia Yusuf vowed to “change the law so that those who commit serious crimes like murder, manslaughter, rape and serious violence serve their full sentences”.

According to The Sun, Nigel Farage has opened talks with the government of El Salvador on potentially renting prison spaces. Party chairman Lee Anderson is expected to lead a delegation in the next few months to further discuss the feasibility.

Mr Farage is expected today to pledge to create 12,000 new prison spaces through the construction of pop-up nightingale prisons – similar to the hospitals and courts introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide additional space.

He is also expected to pledge to end early release for dangerous offenders and to reintroduce short sentences for shoplifters.

It comes as the Government has faced pressure over its early release scheme, which starts in October, aimed at tackling prison overcrowding. Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes – down from 6,000 after the exemptions announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme.

Reform UK’s Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf will hold a press conference at 11am on Monday (August 10), during which they will lay out the party’s “plan to keep criminals behind bars”.

We will bring you all the updates as we get them – please stay with us.

Andy Burnham will begin his summer cost-of-living tour on Monday pledging to provide “everyday fixes” for rising bills.

The Prime Minister intends to spend much of the rest of August travelling the country asking the public how the Government can improve their lives.

What has he announced so far?

Mr Burnham will accelerate plans to tackle “subscription traps” by requiring companies to make it easier to cancel subscriptions and provide more information about costs up-front rather than quietly auto-renewing them at a higher price.

The changes, announced in April, had been expected to come into force next spring, but Mr Burnham will bring their introduction forward to January.

He will also launch a consultation on adding deceptive discount offers to the Competition and Markets Authority’s list of banned practices.

French police just watched as a baby and toddlers were carried aboard a dinghy to England.

Dozens of migrants clambered aboard the boat in the waves as tourists enjoyed lunch on the beach on Sunday.

The youngest hauled aboard was a baby who appeared to be just months old. There were a number of other young children and women, alongside mostly young men.

More than 1,500 convicted foreign criminals are living in taxpayer-funded asylum accommodation because they have not been deported, a Daily Express investigation can reveal. Labour is battling a growing removals backlog, with almost 20,000 foreign crooks living across Britain.

And an 11-month investigation by this newspaper can reveal around 1,509 offenders have been given free homes which have been found for them.

Critics said our findings reveal “that the Home Office is paying for illegal migrant criminals to be scattered in communities”.

The Prime Minister has been looking at ways of preventing the early release of the killers of PC Andrew Harper.

Options included excluding people who kill emergency workers from the scheme.

But there are reports this morning that civil servants have told the Prime Minister this will not be possible.

Opposition parties such as Reform argue that the solution is simply to scrap the early release scheme entirely.

It comes as the Government has faced pressure over its early release scheme, which starts in October in a bid to tackle prison overcrowding.

Some 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after the exemptions announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme.

Under current plans, two of Pc Andrew Harper’s killers remain eligible to be freed halfway through their 13-year sentences after they were convicted of manslaughter in 2020 following Pc Harper’s death in 2019.

More than 850,000 people have signed a petition calling for Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers to remain in jail