Badenoch unable to confirm if she would set up Afghanistan returns agreement
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch refused to confirm if she would set up a returns agreement with Taliban-run Afghanistan, if her party wins the next general election.
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Speaking to reporters during a visit to a farm in Essex, Mrs Badenoch reiterated her party's promise to deport those who come to the country illegally.
She said: “We need to make sure that anyone who comes to our country illegally is deported. We have experience in Government of finding some of these deportations difficult.
“That is why we had the third country deterrent, which was the Rwanda plan. Some countries will not cooperate.
"But from what Reform has announced today, they haven’t done the thinking, they’ve just copied our homework, but they don’t understand the reasons behind them.”
Read more: Nigel Farage's six word answer on how Reform would fund migrant deportations
She continued: “If people come to our country illegally, they need to be returned. We are not in a situation where we can take people from every country in the world, just because they arrive on our shores.”
Mrs Badenoch's comments come following Reform UK's announcement of plans to deport up to 600,000 asylum seekers in its first parliament if elected to government.
Reform UK describes its “operation restoring justice” as a five-year emergency programme to detain and deport illegal migrants and deter future arrivals that they would enact if elected to government.
Reform UK pledged to scale up detention capacity for asylum seekers to 24,000 and secure deals with countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iran to return migrants to their countries.
Mr Farage failed to answer when asked how much he would be prepared to pay to Iran and the Taliban to take deportees back.
Mrs Badenoch also said that leaving the ECHR is not a plan in itself, in response to Reform UK’s immigration plans.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we put out a deportation bill in May. The stuff that actually works in what he said has come from there,” she said.
She said that the Conservatives will announce their plans on whether to leave the European Convention on Human Rights at the upcoming party conference.
“We will announce at our conference exactly what we’re going to do and how.
“Saying you’re going to leave the ECHR is not a plan,” Ms Badenoch said.
It will have an impact on things like the Good Friday Agreement and needs to be done in a way that does not destabilise the country or economy, she said.
