Reform UK has outlined its plans for the British justice system at press conference this morning under the banner that “Britain is lawless”.
Alongside Runcorn Sarah Pochin MP and Councillor Laila Cuinningham, Farage spoke on the perceived issues facing the UK’s current policing standards.
Farage claimed that his party would half crime within five years of being elected, becoming “the toughest party on law and order this country has ever seen.”
Tackling small crimes with harsher penalties
He plans to focus on smaller crimes like shoplifting and phone theft, with Farage claiming that under Reform, police will follow every traceable device and prosecute as many thefts as possible.
The Reform leader cited former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani as his main inspiration, describing how he experienced New York becoming much safer under his tenure while there on business, claiming that “London, or any major city in Britain, needs a Giuliani.”
Giuliani has been credited with bringing down crime in New York, but also faced criticism for his harsh policing methods against relatively minor crimes, and discriminatory stop and search practices.
Although he did not refer to “two-tier-policing” in the press conference, Farage has often accused Keir Starmer’s government of being softer on some groups of offenders, and today, he repeatedly made clear that he thinks Starmer’s approach to policing is the direct opposite of his party’s.
On knife crime, Farage said he wants to carry out stop and search in areas where knives are prevalent, “until we drive knives off the street there”.
However, Stop and Search is already practiced by the police across Britain, and is allowed if officers have “reasonable grounds” to believe someone is carrying a weapon or stolen property. Farage did not specify how he wants to amend the current Stop and Search regulations.
Research has found that stop and search can bring down knife crime in an area, but opponents of the practice say it disproportionately targets minorities while questioning its effectiveness.
Farage also wants to revamp the police force, pledging to hire over 30,000 new officers over a five-year term. The Reform UK leader repeatedly reiterated that he wants to establish a “physically tougher police force,” one that is “feared by criminals”.
He announced he wanted to cut all diversity and inclusion programmes within the force, although did not suggest specific amendments to officer training or equipment and did not directly answer a journalist’s question on whether there were officers currently in the force who were not “tough” enough to continue serving if his plans were implemented.
Further reiterating his “tough” approach, he turned to serious crime. “50 per cent of crime is committed by 10 per cent of criminals,” he said, “and when someone has committed more than three offences or a sexual offence, they should serve their full term.”
How would this work in practice?
With the justice system already strained, he was questioned on how it cope with more criminals prosecuted and imprisoned and fewer released.
The case backlog in British courts continues to rise, with many cases experiencing significant delays in prosecution.
Farage announced plans to reopen many magistrates’ courts he says were closed under David Cameron, saying a Reform government would be reaching out to retired magistrates to have them come back and deal with the backlog in sentencing.
Prison facilities in England and Wales are currently massively overcrowded, having reached record levels of occupancy this April.
To solve this, Farage wants to build new prisons holding an extra 12,000 prisoners, which he claims can be done relatively easily in cooperation with the army. More crucially, he also wants to free up 30,000 prison places which are currently occupied.
For that, the he wants to look abroad. He claims that a quarter of UK prisoners are foreigners, while the government maintains the number is actually about 12 per cent.
He argues that deporting criminals will free up space in Britain’s prisons, he has been in conversation with Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, who Farage claims has agreed to take back Albanian nationals currently imprisoned in the UK. Currently, it is estimated that Albanian nationals make up around 10 to 14 per cent of foreign prisoners in the UK.
Farage also floated the idea of holding prisoners abroad entirely. He pointed to Denmark, which has tried to ease overcrowding in its prisons by sending inmates to Kosovo.
He also cited the Trump administration’s deportations to El Salvador as an example of how other countries could help to ease the overcrowding, however both systems have been criticised by human rights experts.
How would this be funded?
According to Farage, the whole plan will cost around £17 billion over five years, but he insisted that if elected into government, Reform would “pay for this without raising taxes.”
He said that he would fund the plan by cutting public spending, for instance scrapping HS2, and abolishing net zero initiatives. He also wants to make prisons more cost-efficient, claiming that the UK is currently paying £51,724 per prisoner annually.
In an immediate reaction, a Conservative Party spokesperson said that Farage had failed to present a sufficient plan on how to fund all this. “He doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to deliver,” the spokesperson said.
Labour Party Chair had similar criticisms, accusing Farage of “headline-chasing” and pointing out that the government already plans to hire 13,000 police officers until the next election.
Featured image via Reform UK / YouTube.
