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Reform’s Promise
It sounds simple, almost seductive. Scrap “illegal migration”, close the hotels, deport those with no right to be here – and save taxpayers £42 billion over the next decade and £243bn over 80 years. That’s the promise Reform UK makes the centrepiece of its immigration policy.
But the OBR has already shown that drastic cuts to migration will be net negative for the economy. We build on this analysis to show how Reform UK’s own numbers reveal not hundreds of billions of savings, but a trillion pound blackhole.
Nigel Farage’s previous pledge for a hard Brexit led to trade frictions, reduced labour mobility, and low investment – and shattered EU agreements that had kept the small boats crisis at bay.
Now, our analysis suggests his new plan would strike a further blow to Britain’s teetering economy.
Where Is the Opposition to Nigel Farage’s Immoral Mass Deportation Plan?
Keir Starmer’s Government’s refusal to explicitly condemn the Reform leader’s plans to tear thousands of families and communities apart is only clearing his path to Downing Street, argues Adam Bienkov
In its official blueprint, Operation Restoring Justice, the party pledges to “end illegal migration” by ripping up Britain’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Refugee Convention, pushing through a new “Mass Deportation Bill”, and creating a new UK Deportation Command.
Within 18 months, they say, Britain would have 24,000 new detention places and be running up to five deportation flights every day. Offshore camps on Ascension Island are floated as a fallback.
Their document claims the plan would save taxpayers “over £7 billion in five years” and £42 billion in a decade – money they say is currently squandered on asylum seekers in hotels.
The Reality
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – the body that audits the public finances – concludes the opposite. In its March 2024 outlook, the OBR shows that cutting net migration raises Government borrowing by around £13-20 billion within five years, because migrants are mostly of prime working age, pay about £19,500 per adult per year in taxes, and generate £4.1bn a year in visa fees and surcharges.
In short, lower migration worsens the public finances, not the reverse.
Byline Times stress-tested Reform UK’s numbers against the OBR’s modelling. We found that instead of delivering a £42 billion windfall over a decade, the plan generates the opposite.
We found that over five years, the economy would be about £49bn smaller, while the Home Office would face £7bn in direct costs for detention, flights and enforcement, according to analysis of OBR projections.
The smaller economy also implies a £17bn shortfall in tax receipts, but this is a fiscal consequence of the GDP loss. Projected forward, by 2035, the drag rises to an economy £63-81bn smaller, plus £4-10bn in direct Exchequer costs, with £23-29bn less tax revenue embedded in the GDP loss.
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Farage claimed that their plan would save £234 billion over the lifetime of the average migrant (around 80 years), a figure taken from the Thatcherite think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS). However, the CPS later withdrew the figures as “erroneous”. Pressed about this, Farage doubled down, insisting the real savings would be even higher.
We do not believe it’s very meaningful to project, as Reform has, over an 80-year period due to the impossibility of incorporating the innumerable factors that can change in such a time-frame. But if we are to do so, over an 80 year period the total losses to the British economy wrought by Reform UK’s plan would amount to up to 2 trillion pounds – a conclusion consistent with the OBR’s modelling.
According to Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics at King’s College London and a former chief economist at the Cabinet Office and Department of Work & Pensions: “Recent migrants have high employment rates and their earnings rise as they progress in the UK labour market. While the exact numbers are highly uncertain, Reform’s proposals to kick out people who came here legally to work and contribute would have a significant long-term economic and fiscal cost. They are a toxic cocktail of xenophobia and economic illiteracy.”
Follow the Money: Britain’s New Deportation Machine
Reform’s plan has the pace and scale of a military mobilisation. Within 18 months, they promise, Britain would have created 24,000 new detention places, a deportation force ready to seize and escort people at any hour, and up to five planes a day ferrying migrants out of the country.
It sounds decisive. But there’s one question the party never answers: who pays?
Detention: The £1 Billion Bed Bill
At present, Britain’s immigration estate holds fewer than 2,000 people at any one time. Reform wants to expand that to 24,000.
The Home Office’s own figures show that each detention place costs £122 per person, per day. Fill 24,000 beds at 90% occupancy and you are looking at nearly £1 billion every year just to keep the system running. That’s before you pay a penny in capital costs.
The Government has already spent tens of millions converting RAF sites at Wethersfield and Scampton into makeshift accommodation camps. The Foreign Office has warned that offshore processing, like the mooted camps on Ascension Island, would cost around £220 million per 1,000 beds.
At those rates, creating 24,000 places could swallow £5 billion or more in capital before a single person is deported.
Flights: Five Planes a Day
Reform promises five deportation flights every day. Picture that: a plane leaving Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, and Birmingham, day after day, year after year.
But removals are costly. An