Nigel Farage plans a three strikes and you’re out policy for repeat offenders as part of a radical plan to cut crime in half and make Reform UK “the toughest party on law and order and on crime that this country has ever seen”. He warned: “More crime will simply mean more time. Under Reform, if you commit more than three serious offences, you could face life imprisonment.”
Mr Farage pledged to recruit 30,000 extra police officers if he becomes Prime Minister, and said “physically tougher” applicants, including former soldiers, would be given priority in order to intimidate wrongdoers. Thousands of foreign offenders would be deported to their home countries while British criminals would be sent overseas to serve sentences in countries such as El Salvador and Kosovo.
Mr Farage vowed to end the scandal of police failing to arrest shoplifters or mobile phone thieves, and pledged a “zero tolerance” approach to crime. The crackdown would see mothballed courts re-opened, suspects held in “pop-up” custody suites and five new “Nightingale” prisons opened on disused military land, modelled after the Nightingale hospitals created at short notice during the Covid pandemic.
He said: “We will aim to cut crime by half in the first five years of Reform government. We will take back control of our streets. We will take back control of our courts, of our prisons.
“If you’re a criminal, I am putting you on notice today that from 2029 or whenever that may be, either you obey the law or you will face very serious justice.”
Setting out his plan to deal with repeat offenders, Mr Farage said: “If people are convicted of more than three serious offences, frankly that will put them on course towards life imprisonment.”
He added: “50% of crime is committed by 10% of criminals. These are repeat offenders.
“Of course the primary aim of any prison system should be to educate, should be to help train people, should be to help rehabilitate people, and the more of that we can do the better.
“But there is, I’m afraid, that certain percentage who will never be rehabilitated, who will probably use prison as a very different kind of school – how to learn to be even better criminals when they come out, and we do know that does happen in some cases.
“With these type of people, locking them away for a very long time serves one very important purpose. It keeps everybody else safe and away from them. So we have no difficulty saying that whatsoever.”
The party said the plan would cost £17.4 billion over five years, according to documents publiushed by Reform UK. Plans to recruit more police officers take up the biggest chunk of this bill, estimated at £10.5 billion overall.
Pressed on how he would pay for the scheme, Mr Farage highlighted Reform’s policy of scrapping the HS2 high speed rail line and ending Labour’s costly “net zero” plans.
Police in England and Wales recorded 1.957,367 violent crimes last year, more than three times the figure of 634,625 recorded in 2013-14.
Last year police recorded 205,465 sexual offences, up from 64,232 ten years previously.
Mr Farage said that he would be prepared to take back British criminals who are in overseas prisons in return for sending foreign criminals home. But he suggested countries that refused to accept their criminals could face retaliation such as visa restrictions.
The Reform leader said: “Of course we’re prepared to take British prisoners from other parts of the world. That’s fair, right and proper.”
And he said he was already in talks with Albanian’s prime minister over plans to deport Albanian criminals to their home country.
Yesterday’s speech setting out the plans will be the start of a six-week Reform campaign on law and order, as Parliament begins its summer recess break today.
Conservatives accused Mr Farage of pledging to spend billions without having a realistic plan to find the money.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “Nigel Farage is writing his own crime fiction. Their own document admits it is unfunded – which means they are not being honest about the price you will pay for their policies just like Labour.
“This is the same Nigel Farage who calls immigration enforcement ‘divisive’, wants an amnesty for illegal immigrants who’ve ‘integrated’, and says mass deportation is a ‘political impossibility’. You cannot trust a word he says.
“While Farage churns out soundbites based on totally unfunded and uncosted plans that would leave hard working families forced to pay for them through tax rises, the Conservatives are doing the hard graft. Our Deportation Bill will disapply the Human Rights Act, deport every foreign criminal, and close the legal loopholes Labour won’t touch. If the ECHR stands in the way, we’ll leave it.”
Labour chairwoman Ellie Reeves claimed “Reform is more interested in headline-chasing than serious policy-making in the interests of the British people”.
She added: “Farage’s Reform MPs voted against the Labour Government’s landmark Crime and Policing Bill which tackles antisocial behaviour, shoplifting, violence against women and girls, knife crime, and child abuse.”