Archbishop attacks Farage's 'knee-jerk' deportation plan

Nigel Farage has been accused by the Church of England's current most senior bishop of an “isolationist, short-term knee- jerk” response to the small boats crisis.

- DAVID HUGHES

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said the Reform UK leader, who has promised mass deportations, was not offering a solution to the “big issues” driving people to risk the English Channel crossing.

The Reform UK leader has set out plans to remove up to 600,000 people from the country if he forms the next government.

The archbishop, the most senior figure in the Church of England in the absence of an archbishop of Canterbury, was asked for his response to people suggesting that arrivals in the UK would get locked up and deported straight away.

“I’d say to them: you haven’t solved the problem,” he told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips. “You’ve just put it somewhere else and you've done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country.