Reform's migration plan backed as Keir Starmer warned of 'slow-motion immigration car crash' - 'Ticking time bomb!'

Speaking at a press conference today, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage declared the party would "abolish indefinite leave to remain" in a crack down on legal migration.

Mr Farage stated: "We will not only say that these people do not qualify for indefinite leave to remain, we will abolish indefinite leave to remain as a category in this country".

Highlighting the scale of the issue on GB News, Mr Dampier explained: "We've had 3.8 million people come in from 2021 to 2023.

"By 2026 to 2030, about 800,000 of those will qualify for indefinite leave to remain, we could have as many as two million of that 3.8 million, over half, becoming eligible for ILR.

"And once they haven't definitely to remain, that's it. They've got residency, they can access welfare, in fact, they've got every single right that a citizen has, pretty much apart from the right to vote."

Warning of the financial impact on Britain's economy, he added: "You're locking in lots and lots of people to come to this country, to stay permanently and then to bring all of their relatives over as well.

"And most of these people are on very low skilled, low wage incomes, which means that what you're really doing is bringing a lot of people who are going to be fiscal costs.

"And if you add a lot of fiscal costs to the country, obviously what happens is taxpayer money is going to be essentially redistributed to them, which only makes our financial crisis even worse in the long term.

"Even though we're waiting for CPS to redo their numbers, we're looking at maybe £250billion just on this."

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Questioned by host Miriam Cates on Reform's ability to deport the people who "fail to get the relevant rights" under the new policy, Mr Dampier responded: "I think it is feasible. I think it's not feasible under the current rules, but Reform are being quite clear, they've said that they are going to remove people and they're going to do it by cutting out the problem.

"The problem is the law, particularly human rights law, which makes it incredibly difficult to remove people."

Pressed by Miriam on whether Reform's newly announced crackdown will put "pressure" on Labour, he warned: "I hope it does put pressure on them. Labour have been talking about the financial crisis and have been making noises about the border.

"It's quite hard to see how you can claim to be serious on those if you're allowing this sort of slow motion immigration financial car crash to happen."

Mr Dampier added: "On the other hand, there's a lot of pressure within the Labour Party saying that they need to stand up and sort of reclaim the debate on immigration, even if it's incredibly unpopular with the country. So my suspicion is they won't do very much."

Highlighting one important factor of Reform policy that could "spare financial issues" with legal migration, Mr Dampier concluded: "One thing that I'm not sure Reform has discussed yet is if you have gained your citizenship fraudulently, then it can be revoked. And so one thing I've noticed is they're going to ask people to reapply for visas.

"People who currently have to reapply for visas have to redo the language tests. Now that's important because we know that a lot of language tests are faked, and we know the language tests are incredibly low.

"So if they actually reintroduce and say, we're going to recheck your English skills, and if you can't even pass a B1 as you supposedly could, then we know you gained it fraudulently.

"They could revoke citizenship from some of those people and spare us some of the financial issues."