Nigel Farage has been accused of having “no serious answers” to the overcrowding prisons crisis.
The Reform UK leader has today announced a plan to free up space in jails in England and Wales by deporting all foreign offenders to “serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador and Kosovo”.
However, of the 10,000 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales nearly a third are on remand – meaning they have not been convicted, and so would not be eligible for deportation under Reform’s plans.
During his press conference, Farage suggested his party was going on a trip to El Salvador for further discussions about renting prison spaces this year.
Donald Trump previously struck a similar deal with the central American country to deport migrants from the US despite concerns about the prison conditions.
The right-wing party is proposing building “Nightingale prisons” in the UK to create 12,000 more prison spaces, too.
Farage’s proposals were completely rinsed by Labour, though.
A Labour spokesperson said: “Keeping the public safe is and always will be Labour’s first priority.
“The government has already made clear we are working at pace to deport foreign criminals and we’re building more prison places to deliver justice for victims and keep criminals behind bars.
“Reform have no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis and would lead the system to collapse.
“This would result in a free for all for dangerous and violent offenders, including murderers and rapists. Nigel Farage and Reform simply can’t be trusted to keep Britain safe.”
After Farage’s morning press conference, a spokesperson said: “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.”
They added: “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.”
Farage’s plan to fix the prison crisis was also slammed by Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director.
He said: “Reform is proposing to contract into serious human rights abuses in El Salvador to enable the transfer of people convicted in the UK into an extremely overcrowded and abusive prison system overseas – financing brutality with British taxpayers’ money.
“Amnesty has documented mass arbitrary detention, beatings, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, denial of medical care and deaths in custody in El Salvador.
“People have been cut off from their families and effectively disappeared into detention, while relatives have been left searching prisons, courts and even morgues for answers.
“This proposal is a further extension of a wider politics that has moved dangerously far from any sense of what is practical, legal or constitutes basic human decency. We have already seen with the Rwanda scheme how policies once considered unthinkable can be pushed dangerously far when politicians choose headlines and hostility over real solutions to human needs.
“Too many politicians seem incapable of any real leadership – whether at home or internationally – preferring to agitate hate, violence and inhumanity that makes all of us less safe. This latest proposal from Reform provides a stark example of that.”
Prime minister Andy Burnham has been overseeing Labour’s early release scheme, which means thousands of inmates have been freed after serving only a third of their sentences.
However, there has been significant backlash after it emerged that two of police office Andy Harper’s killers being freed.
More than 800,000 Brits signed a petition to stop their release.