Robert Jenrick Reveals Reform’s Bombshell Plan for Stopping Migration
Robert Jenrick has revealed the scale of Reform UK’s proposed crackdown on migration, setting out a programme that would dramatically change the way Britain handles illegal entry, deportation, visas, settlement and access to welfare.
The former Conservative minister, who defected to Reform UK in January 2026, has become one of the party’s most prominent voices on immigration. His move followed months of increasingly hard-line criticism of Conservative immigration policy and his own unsuccessful campaign for the Conservative leadership.
Now, working alongside Nigel Farage and Reform’s wider policy team, Jenrick is helping promote a much more restrictive immigration programme.
At its heart is a simple proposition: Reform says Britain should reduce immigration substantially, remove people who have no legal right to remain and change the rules governing who can settle permanently in the country.
The proposals are extensive—and would require major legal, administrative and diplomatic changes to implement.
Jenrick’s political journey on immigration
Jenrick’s position on immigration has changed considerably during his political career.
He served as immigration minister under the Conservative government and resigned from Rishi Sunak’s cabinet in December 2023, arguing that the government’s legislation on Rwanda did not go far enough.
During the 2024 Conservative leadership contest, immigration became one of the central themes of his campaign. He backed withdrawing Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights, a policy subsequently adopted by the Conservative leadership contest’s right wing and now central to Reform’s immigration programme.
His eventual move to Reform represented a major political shift.
In January, Reform announced that Jenrick had crossed the parliamentary floor after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch removed him from her shadow cabinet and suspended him from the Conservative Party over what she described as evidence that he was planning to defect.
Since joining Reform, Jenrick has increasingly focused on immigration and welfare.
Operation Restoring Justice
The centrepiece of Reform UK’s immigration policy is called Operation Restoring Justice.
According to the party’s current policy programme, Reform would introduce a five-year emergency programme designed to identify, detain and deport people it classifies as illegal migrants.
The party says everyone currently in the UK without legal status would be identified and subject to removal.
It also proposes establishing a dedicated UK Deportation Command and expanding detention capacity. Reform says the Home Office could charter as many as five deportation flights per day.
The proposal represents a substantial expansion of the government’s existing deportation machinery.
Reform also proposes negotiating return agreements with other countries and using visa sanctions against countries that refuse to accept their nationals.
That would make diplomacy a central part of the party’s immigration strategy.
The Channel crossings plan
Another major part of Reform’s programme concerns small boats crossing the English Channel.
The party calls its policy Operation Fortress.
Under the proposal, the Royal Navy, supported by civilian authorities, would intercept migrant boats attempting to cross the Channel and return those on board to France or Belgium under escort.
At its September 2026 conference, Reform Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf described the policy in particularly direct terms, saying that a future Reform government would instruct the Royal Navy to prevent unauthorised vessels from reaching British shores.
The policy raises an immediate practical question: whether France or Belgium would accept people returned from British waters.
Reform has attempted to address that problem by developing relationships with political parties across Europe.
At its 2026 conference, Farage and Jordan Bardella, president of France’s National Rally, signed a memorandum of understanding concerning Channel crossings. Reform said a future French government led by National Rally would accept the return of migrants intercepted after launching from French territory.
However, this remains a political agreement between parties rather than an existing government-to-government arrangement.
Leaving the ECHR
Perhaps the most consequential element of Reform’s programme is its proposed withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Reform says it would leave the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act and introduce legislation preventing people who enter Britain illegally from qualifying for asylum.
This proposal is directly connected to Jenrick’s long-standing argument that human-rights law places limits on the government’s ability to remove people from the country.
Leaving the convention would, however, be a major constitutional and international step.
It would require the UK to withdraw from an international treaty and would raise questions about Britain’s relationship with European institutions and its obligations under other international agreements.
For Reform, the argument is about restoring parliamentary control over immigration policy.
Critics argue that withdrawal could create legal uncertainty and damage Britain’s international human-rights commitments.
Reform also wants to change legal migration
The party’s proposals are not limited to illegal migration.
Reform also wants to reduce the scale of legal migration.
Its current policy programme describes a move towards “net negative immigration” and proposes abolishing indefinite leave to remain.
Under the party’s proposed system, migrants would instead receive renewable five-year visas subject to higher salary thresholds, English-language requirements and stricter character tests.
The party also proposes removing access to benefits for foreign nationals.
In August, Jenrick said Reform wanted to restrict welfare access for foreign nationals, including EU citizens with settled status. Euronews reported that such a policy could require renegotiation of aspects of the UK’s Brexit arrangements because of existing rights associated with the Withdrawal Agreement.
That demonstrates how immigration policy can intersect with other areas of government policy.
Changing settlement rights, welfare eligibility and existing agreements with European citizens would not be a simple administrative exercise.
The wider political argument
Jenrick presents Reform’s programme as a response to what he regards as years of failed immigration policy.
His criticism is directed not only at Labour but also at the Conservatives, the party he represented for more than a decade.
When he joined Reform, Jenrick argued that the Conservatives had lost the trust of many voters because of their record on immigration and other issues. His former Conservative colleagues strongly disputed his political assessment.
That background makes his role within Reform particularly significant.
He understands the Conservative government’s previous immigration policies from inside government, but now argues that a much more radical approach is necessary.
Reform therefore hopes that Jenrick can help convince former Conservative voters that the party offers a fundamentally different approach.
Labour is pursuing its own immigration changes
Reform’s proposals should also be considered alongside the government’s existing immigration reforms.
The Labour government has already introduced measures designed to reduce migration and make settlement more difficult.
A House of Commons Library briefing published in September 2026 noted that the government’s 2025 immigration white paper proposed measures including reducing the number of jobs eligible for overseas recruitment, ending overseas recruitment for social care, strengthening English-language requirements and increasing the standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain from five to ten years.
The government has therefore also moved towards tighter immigration rules.
The difference lies in the scale and mechanism of the proposals.
Reform wants to go substantially further, particularly regarding illegal migration, deportation, settlement rights and the ECHR.
The practical challenge
The biggest question surrounding Reform’s programme is not simply whether its policies are politically popular.
It is how they would operate in practice.
Large-scale deportations require identification systems, detention capacity, flights, legal processes and agreements with receiving countries.
The government would also need to determine how cases involving asylum claims, family relationships and legal appeals would be handled.
Returning Channel migrants creates another practical challenge because Britain cannot simply assume that another country will accept people without an agreement.
Reform’s proposed cooperation with France is therefore important, but it remains dependent on future political developments on both sides of the Channel.
What Jenrick’s plan represents
Jenrick’s role in Reform’s immigration strategy demonstrates how far Britain’s political debate has moved since the Brexit referendum.
Immigration was already a major issue during the Brexit campaign. Since then, arguments about legal migration, asylum, small boats, deportations and settlement have become central to British politics.
Reform is attempting to combine all of these issues into one comprehensive programme.
Its argument is that Britain needs a fundamental reset rather than incremental changes to existing immigration rules.
Jenrick’s contribution is particularly important because he is not approaching the issue solely as an outsider.
He previously served as a government minister responsible for immigration and later became one of the Conservative Party’s most prominent advocates of tougher controls.
His defection gives Reform an experienced political figure who can explain its proposals in detail.
A programme that would transform the system
If implemented in full, Reform UK’s proposals would represent one of the most significant changes to Britain’s immigration system in decades.
The party would seek to intercept Channel boats, dramatically expand deportations, withdraw from the ECHR, abolish indefinite leave to remain, restrict welfare access for foreign nationals and impose tougher conditions on legal migration.
The proposals are considerably broader than simply stopping small boats.
They amount to an attempt to redesign the entire immigration and settlement system.
For Jenrick, that is precisely the point.
He argues that successive governments have treated individual symptoms rather than changing the underlying system.
Reform now wants voters to consider a much more fundamental alternative.
Whether those proposals could be implemented exactly as presented would depend on Parliament, the courts, international agreements, administrative capacity and negotiations with other countries.
But one thing is clear: Robert Jenrick’s arrival has given Reform UK’s immigration agenda a prominent political advocate with direct experience of government.
And with immigration remaining one of the most contested issues in British politics, his new role ensures that the argument over Britain’s borders, asylum system and migration rules will remain at the centre of Reform’s political campaign.
Royal Navy vessels could be deployed in the English Channel to stop small boat crossings under a Reform UK government, Robert Jenrick has said. He said it is “inconceivable” to think that the party won’t stop illegal migration, insisting it is “the most important” thing a government has to do.
The former immigration minister, who defected to Nigel Farage’s party last week, also vowed that a Reform government would drive down all immigration – both legal and illegal – to “zero or lower”. His remarks, during an appearance on our weekday news show the Daily Expresso, come after more than 41,000 illegal migrants arrived in the UK on small boats last year.
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Robert Jenrick says Reform will put the Navy in the Channel to stop small boats (Image: PA)
Net-migration – the total number of people coming here minus those leaving – has now fallen to 204,000, although this number is still historically high.
Speaking about Reform’s migration policy, Mr Jenrick said: “Well, legal migration. We’ve been very clear, we’re going to have a legally binding cap.
“We’re going to set it as low as possible, net zero or lower.”
He added that it will “give the country a period of breathing space”.
He promised that Reform would be robust in stopping the boats, insisting it i s the only party that can do so.
“People who are here illegally need to leave.
“And so there are going to be deportations on a very big scale.
“And you should be prepared that if you don’t have the right to live here, you should either leave before there is a Reform government or you are going to be deported from this country, I think that’s perfectly fair.”
On small boats, Mr Jenrick said Reform would “do what’s necessary”.
“That means scrapping the ECHR, the outdated human rights laws, bringing those back to our own parliament, ensuring that this merry go round of legal appeals comes to an end. “You’ll be detained. You’ll be deported back home to your own country or to a third country. “And frankly, if you need to do more than that, you know, put the Navy in the channel, whatever it might be, we’ll do it.
“It’s inconceivable that a Reform government won’t stop the boats. That is the single most important thing the government has to do.
Small boat crossings have surged since Labour came to power 18 months ago.
Since his defection Mr Jenrick has claimed The Home Office is not fit for purpose and should be abolished in its current form.
The former Tory frontbencher said he would establish a new borders department that would be tasked with taking radical steps to stop small boat crossings.
In November, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced “the most significant changes to our asylum system in modern times”.
These plans include successful asylum applicants having only temporary leave to remain before a review after two and a half years.
Human rights laws will be reformed so family members of asylum seekers are limited to parents and children.
And judges will be told to prioritise public safety and immigration control over a claimant’s human rights.