Its moral and economic costs

Nigel Farage has set out a plan that he claims would lead to the deportation of up to 600,000 asylum seekers if Reform UK were to form a government.

- Jessica Elgot and Aletha Adu

It involves ripping up human rights law, building costly detention infrastructure and potentially paying corrupt and totalitarian regimes billions to accept people on deportation flights.

Here are the main elements of the plan – and what the moral and economic costs would be.

Leaving the ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN refugee convention, the UN convention against torture, and the Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It would likely undermine current returns deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people smuggling with European nations.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”.

As Adam Wagner, a barrister, pointed out, many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would be able to prevent deportations even without international conventions.

‘Payouts’ to countries such as Iran and Afghanistan in exchange for returns agreements