Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has proposed that all foreign prisoners are sent to serve their sentences abroad in order to scrap Labour's early release scheme. Farage said his party was exploring options with third countries over renting prison spaces, including El Salvador, which he said Reform chairman Lee Anderson would visit soon for initial talks. Reform said removing foreign nationals from the prison estate, as well as building emergency "Nightingale" prisons, would enable changes to be made to sentencing laws so that serious criminals serve out their full terms.
Labour said the plan "does nothing" for the current situation as it would take years to arrange renting prison places overseas. Under Reform's plans, foreign criminals handed non-custodial sentences would be deported to their country of origin. Those with custodial sentences would serve all of it out in their home country, or a third country offering rented prison spaces if they refuse to take them.
The party has previously suggested Kosovo and El Salvador as possible options, with Farage suggesting on Monday that Estonia and Lithuania could be looked at. There were 10,134 foreign nationals held in custody in England and Wales at the end of June, representing 12% of the total population. Reform claims its proposals for foreign prisoners would free up more than 10,000 prison spaces, but its policy document does not explain whether it would apply to remand prisoners awaiting trial, which make up around a third of that number.
Both Farage and home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf did not address this point when asked to do so at a press conference to unveil the plans on Monday. Last year, Farage said El Salvador was an "extreme example" of a country where the party could send foreign prisoners. On Monday, he played down accusations of human rights abuses in the Central American country, saying: "Not all of the prisons are cages." El Salvador has the highest incarceration rate in the world, following a government crackdown on gang-related crime, and is home to the notorious mega-jail, the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (Cecot).
Reform says an agreement would require El Salvador to adhere to "British standards on size, lighting, heating, ventilation and fittings, and require daily open air time". Farage added: "To house a foreign national offender in El Salvador will be half the cost of housing a foreign national offender in this country, and will give us more prison spaces." The party said on completion of their sentence, foreign national offenders would return to their home country and be barred from re-entering the UK. The party has not set out a budget for this scheme, saying instead that deals to send prisoners abroad would save on the "billions of pounds" it currently costs the government to house them in the UK.
Other countries have pursued similar arrangements - in 2021, Denmark agreed to pay Kosovo an annual fee of £12.8m for an initial five-year period to rent 300 of their prison spaces. Prisoner release row proving to be Burnham's first big test as PM It comes as the government comes under increasing pressure over its early release scheme, which is now due to start in October in England and Wales when the first batch of a total 5,000 prisoners are due to be released. Last week, Andy Burnham announced that prisoners convicted of rape, grooming, and serious child sex offences would be excluded from the scheme, adding that he wanted to exclude more but prison overcrowding prevented this.
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