Secure the Border. Keep Criminals Behind Bars. Why Reform’s Plan Matters to Scotland
Two Reform UK policy papers set out a single, uncompromising principle: the law must mean what it says. If someone is in Britain illegally, the state should remove them. If a dangerous criminal is sentenced to prison, the sentence should be served — not quietly cut short because the system has run out of capacity.
Reform UK’s Operation Restoring Justice sets out a five-year emergency programme to identify, detain and deport people living illegally in the United Kingdom, backed by new legislation, a UK Deportation Command, new detention capacity and large-scale removal flights. Keeping Criminals Behind Bars tackles the other side of the law-and-order crisis: early release, insufficient prison capacity and the cost of keeping foreign national offenders in British prisons.
For Scotland, these issues cannot be dismissed as something happening somewhere else. Immigration, asylum, nationality and deportation are UK matters. At the same time, policing, courts, sentencing and prisons are devolved to Holyrood. A serious Scottish approach therefore requires both levels of government to do their jobs: Westminster must secure the border and enforce removals; Scotland must ensure its own justice system protects the public and has the capacity to keep dangerous offenders off the streets.
A country that cannot control who stays inside its borders — or keep dangerous offenders behind bars for the sentences handed down by courts — is not exercising meaningful control of law and order.
Reform’s two plans are designed to restore that control: removal for illegal residence, deportation for foreign offenders, enough secure capacity to make enforcement possible, and an end to automatic early release for the most serious crimes.
The Scale of the Reform Plan
Reform’s estimate of the number of people now living in the UK without lawful right to remain.
Secure Immigration Removal Centre places proposed within 18 months.
The proposed scale of charter deportation flights, with RAF contingency support.
Prison places Reform says could be freed by transferring foreign national offenders abroad.
Rapid modular “Nightingale” prison places proposed on MoD land within 18 months.
The immigration paper’s projected net taxpayer saving over the first decade.
1. Illegal Means Removal: Operation Restoring Justice
Operation Restoring Justice starts from a blunt assessment: successive governments have promised to control illegal immigration while allowing a large population with no lawful right to remain to build up inside the country. Reform estimates that population now exceeds one million and argues that the continuing failure to remove people who have no right to be here undermines the rule of law, places additional costs on public services and weakens the deterrent effect of the border.
The proposal is not simply another pledge to “speed up processing”. It is designed around an enforcement system capable of removal at scale. Reform proposes a five-year emergency programme with a new legal framework and a dedicated operational command.
A Legal Reset
The immigration paper proposes leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a British Bill of Rights. It would then pass an Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill creating a legal duty on the Home Secretary to remove people who do not have lawful leave to remain and are not otherwise protected by the legislation.
The Bill Would Seek To:
The paper also proposes emergency disapplication or derogation from international treaty provisions it believes could frustrate removals. That is a major constitutional and legal change, but Reform’s argument is straightforward: if Parliament legislates for removal, the policy must not be designed so that removal becomes practically impossible.
A Deportation System Built to Operate at Scale
Legislation alone does not put anyone on a plane. That is why Operation Restoring Justice proposes a new UK Deportation Command and an Illegal Migrant Identification Centre bringing together government data to identify and locate people living in the country illegally.
Identify
A national data-fusion operation intended to locate people with no lawful right to remain.
Detain
Up to 24,000 secure removal-centre places built within 18 months using modular construction.
Remove
Charter operations scaled to as many as five flights per day, backed by contingency aircraft.
Deter
Lifetime re-entry bans and the certainty of removal are intended to end the incentive to come or remain illegally.
Before large-scale enforcement begins, the plan proposes a six-month assisted voluntary return window, giving people an opportunity to leave voluntarily. After that, the system would move to large-scale detention and enforced removal.
The Foreign Office would be instructed to make return agreements a top diplomatic priority. Reform proposes using incentives where countries cooperate and penalties — including restrictions on visas and potential sanctions — where governments refuse to take back their own nationals. Third-country arrangements would provide an additional route where direct return cannot be secured immediately.
The deterrent is not another leaflet, slogan or temporary scheme.
It is the certainty that illegal residence ends in removal, not indefinite accommodation, repeated appeals and eventual regularisation.
2. Sentence Means Sentence: Keeping Criminals Behind Bars
The second paper focuses on a different failure of enforcement. Reform argues that the public hears a judge impose a prison sentence but increasingly sees a system in which the offender serves only a fraction of it in custody. The paper attacks the expanding use of automatic early release and suspended sentences, and argues that inadequate prison capacity has been allowed to dictate sentencing policy.
Its core proposal is that people convicted of the most serious offences should serve the entirety of the custodial sentence imposed by the court. The paper specifically includes rape, manslaughter and serious violent offences, and proposes reversing recent changes that lowered release points for other standard determinate sentences.
For the most serious crimes, Reform’s position is simple: no automatic early release.
The paper says rapists, child abusers, those convicted of manslaughter and other serious violent criminals should not walk out of prison before the sentence imposed by the court has been served.
Reversing Early Release
Reform estimates that undoing the recent early-release changes, reinstating short sentences and ending early release for serious offences would increase demand by around 18,000 prison places. The paper therefore treats capacity as part of the policy rather than an excuse for abandoning it.
Foreign Criminals Should Not Be Using British Prison Space
The prison paper says there were 10,134 foreign nationals in custody in England and Wales on 30 June 2026, around 12% of that prison population, at an estimated annual taxpayer cost of £643 million. Reform proposes transferring foreign national offenders serving meaningful custodial sentences to their home country or to rented prison capacity in third countries. Those receiving non-custodial sentences would be deported.
The objective is to free around 10,000 domestic prison places while ensuring foreign offenders still serve their sentences. On completion, they would return to their country of nationality and face a lifetime ban on re-entry to the United Kingdom.
The principle matters.
Deportation should not become a shortcut that allows a foreign offender to walk free abroad. Reform’s proposal is that foreign criminals are removed from Britain and still serve the sentence.
Build the Capacity Instead of Releasing the Criminals
Reform proposes approximately 12,000 rapid modular prison places on Ministry of Defence land within 18 months. The plan points to modular construction already used in the prison estate: units manufactured off-site, transported to prepared sites and installed rapidly using standardised designs.
Combined with overseas transfer of foreign offenders, Reform says this would create or release roughly 22,000 places, with the wider prison programme costed at around £5 billion over a Parliament. The message is that capacity should be expanded to meet the requirements of justice — rather than justice being weakened to fit the number of cells available.
The Scottish Reality: One UK Border, a Devolved Justice System
This is where the Scottish angle matters. The two policy papers operate across different constitutional responsibilities.
Reserved to Westminster
Immigration, asylum, nationality, border control and deportation are UK responsibilities. A Reform UK government’s removal and border policies would therefore directly matter to Scotland as part of the United Kingdom.
Devolved to Holyrood
Criminal justice is devolved. Scotland has its own courts, sentencing framework and prison service. The prison paper itself expressly notes that criminal justice is devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
That means the detailed early-release provisions discussed in Keeping Criminals Behind Bars are primarily based on the law and prison statistics of England and Wales. They would not automatically rewrite Scottish sentencing law. Any equivalent “sentence means sentence” reforms for Scottish offenders would need to be delivered through the Scottish Parliament and Scotland’s justice institutions.
But that does not make the paper irrelevant to Scotland. Quite the opposite. It provides a clear policy test for Holyrood: should serious offenders serve the punishment imposed by the court, and should government provide the prison capacity needed to make that possible? Reform’s answer is yes.
For Scotland, both governments have a job to do.
Westminster: control entry, identify illegal residents, secure return agreements and enforce deportation.
Holyrood: ensure Scottish sentencing, prisons and release rules put public protection first and provide enough capacity to enforce the sentences Scottish courts impose.
Why Will These Policies Benefit Scotland?
Because Scotland does not exist in a bubble. The consequences of a weak UK border and a justice system that cannot enforce its own sentences are eventually felt in Scottish communities, Scottish public services and Scottish household budgets.
1. Less pressure from illegal migration
A UK system that actually removes people with no lawful right to remain reduces the long-term pressure created by an illegal population that Reform says is already above one million. Scotland shares the public-service and taxpayer consequences of failure at the UK border.
2. A stronger deterrent protects every part of the UK
Detention, removal and a lifetime re-entry ban are intended to replace the expectation that illegal entry or overstay can eventually lead to permanent residence. A functioning deterrent at the UK border benefits Scotland before the downstream costs ever arrive here.
3. Foreign criminals should be removed, not maintained indefinitely
Immigration and deportation powers are UK-wide. Reform’s principle is that foreign offenders should serve their sentence, be removed from Britain and be barred from returning. In Scotland, the practical transfer of prisoners would require coordination with the devolved justice system, but the objective is the same: British prison capacity should prioritise protecting the British public.
4. Serious criminals should not be released simply because capacity is tight
The Scottish Parliament controls Scottish sentencing and prisons. The lesson from Reform’s prison paper is directly relevant: government should build the capacity required by justice, rather than weaken justice to fit existing capacity.
5. Taxpayers should fund services, not permanent failure
Operation Restoring Justice projects a net saving of more than £7 billion in its first five years and £42 billion over a decade. Those are UK-wide estimates, not a specific Scottish allocation, but reducing the cost of illegal migration strengthens the public finances that ultimately support services across the country.
6. Public confidence depends on consequences being real
A border rule that is not enforced and a sentence that is routinely reduced both send the same message: official decisions are negotiable. Reform’s approach is built around restoring certainty — illegal residence ends in removal; serious crime ends in the sentence being served.
For Scotland, this is about restoring consequences.
No lawful right to remain? Removal. Foreign criminal? Serve the sentence and leave. Serious violent or sexual offence? Serve the sentence imposed by the court. Not enough secure capacity? Build it.
A Joined-Up Law-and-Order Strategy
The strength of these two papers is that they do not treat border control, deportation, sentencing and prison capacity as unrelated problems. They are all parts of the same state responsibility: enforcing lawful decisions.
If illegal migrants cannot be detained, deportation orders become paper exercises. If foreign offenders cannot be transferred, domestic prison capacity remains under pressure. If governments refuse to build prison places, politicians reach for early release. And if serious offenders routinely serve only part of the sentence announced in court, public confidence collapses.
Reform’s answer is to deal with the chain from beginning to end: legal powers, enforcement personnel, detention capacity, removal flights, diplomatic return agreements, foreign-prison transfers, rapid prison construction and tougher rules on release.
Read the Full Policy Documents
This article summarises the main proposals. The full documents contain the detailed legal, operational, costing and prison-capacity arguments.
Secure Borders. Safe Streets. Real Consequences.
Scotland deserves a government that enforces the law instead of explaining why it cannot.
Control the border. Deport those with no right to remain. Remove foreign criminals. Build the capacity to keep dangerous offenders behind bars.
