Reform’s immigration agenda is designed to stoke fear Philip Trott tells LBC’s Iain Dale.
23 September 2025
Reform’s immigration agenda is “muddled thinking” designed to “put fear into people’s minds” Philip Trott told LBC radio’s Iain Dale.
Vanessa Ganguin Immigration Law’s Senior Counsel explained how hundreds of thousands of people who followed the UK’s immigration rules with a “legitimate expectation” of permanent settlement in Britain may seek to judicially review a plan to retrospectively remove the rights they had earned as Nigel Farage’s right wing Reform UK party insist they would do if they ever came to power.
At a press conference on Monday 22 September 2025, right wing UK political party Reform UK revealed incendiary immigration proposals to get rid of Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), which most UK immigrants can apply for after three, five or ten years if they want to settle in Britain.
ILR entitles immigrants to the UK to have a recourse to public funds and after another year they can choose to apply for citizenship.
In a muddled announcements that left many questions from reporters unanswered, Nigel Farage said his party should it win the next general election would scrap ILR and even those who already had settled through this path would have to renew visas every five years. There would be a seven year path to citizenship, but there would be a salary threshold for this.
Many criticised the proposals as unworkable, ill thought out, unlikely to pass, immoral and incredibly damaging to countless families that would be torn apart, businesses that would fail without their workers and public services such as the National Health Service that would fall apart. Farage boasted that he would remove hundreds of thousands of people from the UK. Yet did not have any details of the mechanisms he would use if he ever won an election.
Vanessa Ganguin Immigration law Senior Counsel Philip Trott spoke to Iain Dale on LBC radio about why he thought such proposals were impractical and designed to grab headlines and stoke fears.