Nigel Farage MP (Clacton, Reform UK) ©House of Commons Reform UK has pledged to suspend the UK’s asylum system for five years if it wins the next general election. Under the plans, announced today by party leader Nigel Farage, all asylum applications in progress would be declared void. Asylum tribunals, safe and legal routes, and resettlement schemes would be scrapped. Around 90,000 people with outstanding appeals would be deported without their cases being heard. Humanists UK has condemned the proposal, warning that it would abandon the UK’s long tradition of protecting people fleeing persecution. The announcement follows Reform UK’s pledge in August 2025 to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), repeal the Human Rights Act, and disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention. Humanists UK condemned those plans at the time, warning that they would put the rights of everyone in the UK at risk. It also raised the alarm over the Conservative Party’s commitment to withdraw from the ECHR, and recently challenged misleading rhetoric about its role in immigration and asylum cases, amid the Labour Government’s proposals to limit the application of Article 8 – the right to respect for private and family life – in immigration and deportation decisions. The UK has a long history of offering sanctuary. In 1938 and 1939, the Kindertransport brought around 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, to safety in Britain from Nazi Germany and the territories it controlled. After the Second World War, British lawyers played a leading role in drafting
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