Answering the Reform propaganda machine

Answering the Reform propaganda machine

Reform UK are pumping out twisted and misleading propaganda about migration. Here are some of the issues that get raised – with factual responses.

Key message

Nigel Farage wants to abandon the centuries-old British tradition of providing a haven for genuine refugees and instead send people back to places where they may face torture or death.

He and his cronies have distorted the facts to suggest that illegal migrants arriving on small boats are a massive threat to the UK when in fact their numbers are only 0.06% of the UK population and Britain has fewer asylum seekers than many countries including France, Germany and Italy.

His so-called plan to deal with this is to deport all asylum seekers arriving on small boats. This is inhumane and impractical. It would require return agreements with oppressive regimes such as in Afghanistan and Iran. It would mean sending those who are genuinely at risk back to their home countries to be imprisoned, oppressed or killed. It would also need masses of new detention centres and border force staff.

“Illegal migrants are flooding the UK”

Illegal migrants coming to the UK in small boats to seek asylum in the year to March 2025 numbered 38,000. That’s about 0.06% of the UK population of 68 million or one 17^th of 1 per cent.

Almost half of Britons (47%) think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally, rather than legally. In fact there are vastly more legal than illegal migrants. In the year to March 2025, the 38,000 small boat arrivals compared with 807,000 people arriving to study, work and join family members legally. Small boat arrivals are just 4% of all those coming to the UK, other than as visitors. If you thought illegal migrants were the majority, consider how far the truth has been twisted.[1]

At the last Census in 2021/22, around 17% of people in the UK had been born abroad – a total of around 10 million.[2] That is a smaller percentage than in many countries, including Spain, Germany, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.[3]

Farage is partly responsible for the increase in immigration as he campaigned to leave the EU and thus tear up 27 return agreements we had with other countries whereby, the United Kingdom could legally and fairly return people who had no right to be here.

“Most asylum claims are fake”

Around half of asylum seekers are granted asylum. This shows that they are genuine refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution and face a serious risk of harm if returned.[4] They come from countries like Iran, Eritrea and Afghanistan which have repressive regimes and those admitted often have personal reasons why they might be targeted if returned.

“The UK takes in more asylum seekers than anyone else”

The UK receives fewer asylum seekers than many other countries. In 2024, we had 108,000 applications, compared to 157,000 in France, 159,000 in Italy and 251,000 in Germany [5]. Turkey has more than three million asylum seekers.

Only a tiny minority of refugees globally come to the UK. 85% of all refugees live in poorer, developing regions of the world, and 73% of refugees live in countries next to where they came from.[6]

“Asylum seekers are just here for benefits”

Asylum seekers do not get normal benefits. They typically receive £49.18 per week, but only £9.95 if their accommodation provides food.

“Migrants are living off the rest of us”

Not only do asylum seekers receive very small sums but most legal immigrants put more money into the country than they take out.

400,000 people came to study in the UK in the last year, bringing money into our economy and getting a world-leading education that boosts Britain’s standing in the world.[7]

300,000 came here to work. Many immigrants fill staff shortages in health and social care created because not enough British people choose those careers. For example more than a quarter of nurses, nearly 100,000, are from outside the UK[8].

“Asylum seekers should use safe routes”

Many migrants have no choice than to get here on boats or other irregular routes because easy-to-access legal routes have been cut-off. For example, the UK Afghanistan Resettlement Programme has been closed and Home Office policy now says that “a well-founded fear of persecution by the Taliban” does not entitle someone to protection.[9]

“Many migrants are criminals”

As of the end of June 2023, there were around 10,300 foreign nationals in prison, out of a total prison population of 85,900, according to Parliamentary research. That is 12%, which is lower than the overall proportion of foreign-born people in the country, showing that people recorded as foreign-born are less, rather than more, likely to be sent to jail. [10]

“Migrants get priority in healthcare”

Migrants do not get priority. In fact they have to pay for things Britons don’t. While UK-born people have free NHS care, most foreign-born people coming to the UK pay a surcharge of £1,035 per year for access to the UK, payable when they apply for a visa, typically paying £3,105 for a 3-year visa surcharge.[11]

Asylum seekers do have free access to healthcare. The NHS includes them alongside homeless people as vulnerable group for whom it has an “inclusion health strategy”. This is because meeting the needs of people in disadvantaged groups costs society an estimated £10 billion per year.[12]

The Express reported this year that 59% of HC2 certificates for expenses such as prescriptions, glasses and dentistry went to asylum seekers between 2019 and 2024.[13] That is because those HC2 certificates, which cover things that people typically pay for like dentistry and prescriptions, are only given to people with ultra-low incomes and the Government deliberately informs asylum seekers about them. The certificates are available to anyone in the UK, regardless of nationality or immigration status, who can demonstrate they have little to no income.

Meanwhile Reform UK have no clear plan for healthcare other than suggesting they will privatise it. Nigel Farage is on record as saying: “I do not want it funded through general taxation”.

“The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is stopping us returning those with no right to be here”

Nigel Farage has attacked Britain’s support for the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), seeking to turn “human rights” into a problem rather than something to cherish. The ECHR protects the rights of asylum seekers against deportation to countries where they might face ill-treatment. Many would support that.

Article 8 of the ECHR is more controversial as it protects the right to “respect for private and family life” and this has been held to stop people being deported when they do not face persecution.

However, the ECHR is not the massive obstacle that you might think from the media coverage. The European Court of Human Rights has rarely ruled against the UK government over the removal of people from the UK. Since 1980 – ie over 45 years – there have been just 29 UK cases at the Court that have concerned either deportation or extradition. In 16 of these cases, the majority, the Court found that a planned deportation or extradition by the UK government would not breach the Convention and could go ahead. [23]

Leaving the ECHR) would also weaken legal protection for women in the UK. For example, the ECHR has established a duty on the police to effectively investigate violence against women and girls and provide protection. Withdrawing from the ECHR would damage the UK’s international reputation as a champion of human rights. The UK would join only Belarus and Russia in not being a party to the ECHR among European nations.

Leaving the ECHR would also imperil the Good Friday Agreement that has brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland. This is because the Agreement requires the UK to incorporate the ECHR into Northern Ireland law to protect human rights.

Francesca Klug, a human rights expert, told The Observer that withdrawing from the ECHR “would have little bearing on stopping asylum seekers from coming over on small boats, but it would severely reduce cooperation with other European states”. So this is another example of an issue being blown up to wind up.

“Migrants shouldn’t have indefinite leave to remain”

Nigel Farage has promised “mass deportations” of migrants by abolishing indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and forcing those who already have settled status to reapply for a new stricter visa. Migrants can currently apply for ILR after five years. The proposed new rules would force them to renew their visa every five years. Applicants would also have to meet certain criteria, including a higher salary threshold, rising from £41,700 to around £60,000.[14]

This policy is cruel and impractical. It would split up families. It would mean expelling people who have lived here for years, contributing to the UK economy and working in our companies and services. Businesses would be thrown into disarray, and the UK would lose billions in economic growth and tax revenues.[15]

Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Threatening to sack thousands of migrant nursing staff is abhorrent beyond words. These are people who have come to the UK to care for patients and become part of our communities. They deserve so much better than this.”

Farage claimed Britain would save £234 billion by banning those on indefinite leave from claiming benefits, but the think tank that came up with that number, the Centre for Policy Studies, said it was a “ballpark figure” that “should no longer be used”.[16]

“We don’t want foreigners here”

Britain has a history of welcoming people fleeing persecution in other countries – and of politicians trying to win power by falsely blaming migrants for the country’s problems.

In the 17th century, the UK took in tens of thousands of French protestants after Louis XIV made their religion illegal.
Around 300,000 Irish people came the Britain during and after the Irish famine of the 1840s.
Around 150,000 Jewish people came here when they were persecuted in Russia and Eastern Europe in the decades before World War 1. Anti-Jewish sentiment led to the Aliens Act of 1905, the first major restriction on immigration. Oswald Mosley led the antisemitic movement in the 1930s and founded the British Union of Fascists, supporting Hitler. It attracted thousands but collapsed after Hitler started World War Two and people saw what fascism really meant.
During World War 1, an estimated 250,000 Belgians fled from the Germans to the UK, almost all returning at the end of the war.
In the late 1930s, as Hitler’s Nazi Germany stepped up its oppression of Jewish people, 10,000 Jewish children were rescued through the Kindertransport mission.
During the war around 200,000 Polish people found refuge in the UK.
After the Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956, around 22,000 Hungarians were admitted.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, more than 150,000 East African Asians came to Britain after being discriminated against or forced to leave their home countries.
Around 22,000 Vietnamese people came to the UK after the Vietnamese civil war to escape repression.
Since 2020 a special scheme has allowed around 140,000 people from Hong Kong to enter Britain after China passed a law that the UK government said infringed their rights.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, around 175,000 Ukrainians have come to the UK.[17]

Is this record something to be ashamed of? Or be proud of? Each of us must decide.

Facts to think about

There has been a surge in asylum claims from 18,000 in 2020 to more than 100,000 last year. But this scale of claims is not unprecedented. There were more than 100,000 claims in 2003 when the wars in Iraq and elsewhere drove numbers up. 100,000 is 0.15% of the UK population and recently only around half of applications have been granted.[18]

It comes down to whether we think we should help people who come to the UK from violent and dangerous situations where they may face personal persecution, or whether we don’t.

Anyone who rejects incomers on the grounds of their race is part of a dwindling minority. In 2022, only 5% of the British public said they would not like to have immigrants as neighbours (Figure 1), compared with 14% in 2014. The share of people expressing prejudice towards migrants in Britain was one of the lowest in the world and smaller than in other democracies such as Japan (30%), Greece (26%), Italy (18%), and France (10%).[19]

One asylum seeker from Afghanistan came here after the Taliban targeted him because he was providing schoolbooks for children. He said: “I’d like to say thank you to British people. Some of them understand the situation in Afghanistan. But some people don’t understand. The people who come here are not happy to leave their own country. They are in danger. They came here to save their life. I’d ask you, don’t just see one side – see both sides. People who come here are looking to you as their last chance – they hope you respect humanity.” [20] Read full story.

Most British people are proud of the country’s record in taking in refugees. [21] But Nigel Farage would send that young man back to the Taliban. Each of us has to decide which side we are on.

Case study – distorted allegations of crimes by Afghans

As an example of how Reform twist the facts, let’s look in detail at Nigel Farage’s statement that “An Afghan male has a 22 times more likely chance of being convicted of rape than somebody born in this country.” That was based on 77 Afghans being convicted of sexual offences in England and Wales from 2021 to 2023, compared with 14,270 British people.

Farage got his “22 times more likely” figure from the government’s Annual Population Survey (APS), which was last published in 2021 and put the Afghan population of England and Wales at 13,000. However the APS is a sample of just 320,000 households (0.5% of all households) and its data depends on people choosing to fill it in. People who don’t speak good English may not respond to the survey at all. So it underestimates the Afghan population.

A much more reliable source is ‘country of birth’ data from the 2021 Census which asked questions of the entire population of around 60,000,000 who were at their usual residence. These figures put the Afghan population of England and Wales at 85,687, more than six times higher than the APS estimate.

A Sky fact-check based on the Census and other sources estimated that Afghans are only closer to three times more likely to be convicted of a sexual offence than someone born in the UK, rather than 22 times – and if the comparison were made between men only and those of working age – the proportion is likely to be smaller still.[22]

So Farage is twisting the data to suggest Afghans are a much bigger threat to women and girls than they actually are when in fact many of those coming here are doing so are law-abiding refugees who are at risk from the Taliban, often because they worked for the British military.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-march-2025/summary-of-latest-statistics

[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/internationalmigrationenglandandwales/census2021

[3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-the-share-of-foreign-born-population-in-oecd-countries/

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-december-2024/how-many-people-are-granted-asylum-in-the-uk

[5] https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01403/SN01403.pdf

[6] https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/about/facts-about-refugees/

[7] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-march-2025/summary-of-latest-statistics

[8] https://www.nhsconfed.org/articles/immigration-harming-nhs

[9] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghanistan-country-policy-and-information-notes/country-policy-and-information-note-fear-of-the-taliban-afghanistan-august-2025-accessible

[10] https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2024-0023/CDP-2024-0023.pdf

[11] https://www.gov.uk/healthcare-immigration-application/how-much-pay

[12] https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/a-national-framework-for-nhs-action-on-inclusion-health/