Reform UK has pledged to prosecute chief executives of companies if migrants they house end up committing violence against women and girls.
Nigel Farage’s party has pledged to set up a police-led taskforce to scrutinise private sector contractors that provide accommodation for asylum seekers.
The taskforce will assess whether private company bosses can be held criminally liable if migrants they are responsible for housing commit acts that harm members of the community.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman, announced the policy on Saturday while on a visit to Piddington, Oxfordshire, near where more than 1,000 asylum seekers were expected to be housed.
He said: “Labour is dumping 1,250 illegal migrant men from countries like Afghanistan on to a tiny village of 350 people. The women and girls here are terrified. Andy Burnham is turning their lives upside down. What kind of a government does this to its own people?”
He said a future Reform government would hold to account the chief executives of companies that took up Home Office contracts to house migrants, and ensure they were “criminally responsible” for any dangerous acts caused by those in their accommodation.
Earlier this year, the Home Office announced plans to accommodate up to 1,250 male asylum seekers in a former army barracks close to Piddington.
Bicester Garrison, between Piddington and Upper Arncott, is one of three additional former military sites – alongside RAF Linton-on-Ouse and RAF Barnham – that could become camps for up to 3,750 asylum seekers. The move is part of efforts to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of the current parliament.
Challenged about the expansion plans in July, Jake Richards, a justice minister, acknowledged that the Government would face local opposition, but said the action was necessary to end the use of hotels.
He said: “The military sites that we are proposing to use … are large sites, they are more contained. I understand there will always be opposition to such proposals as we’re setting out today.”
The two other proposed asylum camps have been met with similar concerns.
Mr Richards said: “Ultimately, the question for politicians, when you’re in government, is what are your priorities?
“And we made a promise to the British people that we would close these hotels, which have caused so much angst, so much anxiety, and so much pain across the country and we will do that.
“Now, that might mean difficult decisions, but we will do as the Home Secretary has said, whatever it takes to close these hotels, get a grip of our borders, and fix the asylum system and we will do that.”
Speaking to campaigners in Piddington, Mr Yusuf discussed the demographic and strain on local infrastructure facing rural communities when large-scale asylum accommodation centres were imposed without local consent.
Reform UK has previously pledged that army bases used to house asylum seekers would be turned into “detention camps” from the first day of a Reform government.
The move, which would require emergency legislation to circumvent human rights laws, would prevent migrants from roaming into towns if they had entered the UK illegally, the party said.