Kevin Hollinrake Accuses Nigel Farage of Copying Conservative Immigration Plans, Warns on Unaffordable Spending

Kevin Hollinrake, Conservative MP and party chairman, has accused Nigel Farage and Reform UK of copying Conservative plans to tackle illegal immigration, while warning that Farage’s proposals would add unsustainable costs to the national finances.
Speaking on GB News, Hollinrake said, “Farage planned to send all the boats back to France. Now, he says he has looked at our plans and decided it is not going to work. As we told him at the time, the only way he is going to be able to do this is to do exactly what we plan to do, which is the detention and deportation of all illegal migrants who come to this country, and indeed, national offenders. So yes, Nigel Farage has very much copied Kemi Badenoch’s plans.”
He emphasised the Conservative Party’s broader agenda, saying, “While steering all this, Kemi Badenoch has immigration plans, both legal and illegal, and education and house building, and many of the things which we have not heard from Reform. Crucially, the big difference is that we are going to balance the books, whereas Reform’s spending plans are totally unaffordable. They would bankrupt this country; that is the reality. We are already spending £120 billion every year more than we are bringing in, and Nigel Farage is committed to spending another £120 billion a year on top of that. It is just completely unaffordable.”
On Farage’s target to deport 600,000 people, Hollinrake explained, “Our way of dealing with this, because we recognised the problem of sending people back to places like Afghanistan and Iran, was to have a third-country solution which was Rwanda. We had to push this through Parliament despite objections from Labour, the Lib Dems and others. They objected 134 times. But we still got it through. Then we had to deal with court challenges regarding Rwanda’s safety, which is a safe country. So we got all that through using this third-country solution rather than sending people back directly to places like Afghanistan and dealing with regimes such as the Taliban and the Ayatollah.”
Hollinrake also stressed the importance of credible delivery, saying, “It is actions, not words. The plans we put together and will announce in the coming weeks will be deliverable. That is Kemi Badenoch’s commitment. It is not about rushing out plans because it is politically expedient; it is about making sure we can deliver on our promises by working out the solutions and then telling the public about them. We have to rebuild trust. We did lose some trust. We made mistakes. We cannot do that again.”
Reacting to the 2 per cent rise in the energy price cap from October, Hollinrake called it “broken promises by Labour. They came into office saying they would lower energy prices by £300 a year, whereas the energy cap is now £200 higher than it was in July last year. That is because of the madcap plans of Ed Miliband.”
He advocated for practical energy solutions, stating, “It just does not make sense to close down gas production and then import more gas. And with this headlong rush into Russian tomato wind, onshore wind, and offshore wind, we are not against wind, but there must be a balanced mix between gas, wind, particularly offshore wind, and nuclear reactors, including small modular nuclear reactors, which we were pushing ahead with. So enough of the ideology. Look at the practical solutions for how we can lower energy prices. It is through that mix.”