Nigel Farage's immigration plans branded 'nasty and invidious'

Pete Wishart, the SNP group's deputy leader at Westminster, also told LBC that Nigel Farage's plans to make sweeping changes to the indefinite leave to remain status for people who move to the UK was "over-reach" and could lead to a backlash against his party.

Mr Farage today laid out Reform's immigration plans should his party ever be the UK government, including restricting welfare payments to British nationals, "mass deportations" of migrants by abolishing indefinite leave to remain (ILR). and those who already have settled status would need to reapply for a new, stricter visa.

Responding to the plans, Mr Wishart told LBC: "This is a nasty, invidious set of measures. You didn't think Reform UK could actually get any worse and today they've just sank below any sort of sense of decency.

"Reform has managed to have a bit of success with their anti-immigration anti-sylum seeker initatives in the last year because these asylum seekers are pretty much anonymous people, nobody knows anything about and what he's proposing today, is a deportation policy that would round up 100s of 1000s of people who are in our community, who are friends and colleagues, who have been settled here for a number of years, and I just think it's absolutely disgraceful."

He added: "I think he's actually over-reached himself. And I think there will be a response, a genuine response of disapproval. And what we'll see is a rallying of support around people that they recognise because it's got personal now. It's not anonymous. It's people in our community we know.

"I think there's always a sort of sense of fair play in that becoming a citizen of this country is something that people could aspire to and to do that you become a good member of your community and you contribute economically... that you earn your right through your hard work and endeavour, and what you contribute, to secure and acquire citizenship. He's saying that will be gone.

"There'll be no means for people to secure that with the abandoning of ILR. And also the other aspects, the no recourse to public funds, a higher cap set for minimum wages for those coming to the United Kingdom, family members not able to come with anybody who's managed to secure refugee status or immigration status... it's a devastating package.

"But I really do believe that today he's just gone too far. I actually see this as an opportunity to start to halt his progress."

Mr Wishart also slammed the Labour Party for "placating" Reform on immigration rather than "challenging" the party and praised a recent intervention from former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock.

"They have done nothing absolutely nothing to challenge Faragels assumptions, to try and take on his agenda, just even question it a little bit," he said.

"All they've ever tried to do is to placate him, to go into his territory, to meet him on his ground in his turf. And what we've seen, of course, is the calamitous fall in Labour support and the dramatic rise of Reform. You don't beat people like Farage, the nasty right wing populists by endorsing them. You beat them by taking them on and hopefully today the Labour Party might just be looking at what's happening and decide that might be something that they'll get into.

"I thought Lord Kinnock's intervention over the weekend was very interesting and it would be good if Labour just listened because he's absolute spot on - it's Brexit that's led to so many difficulties. The fact that we're outwith the Dublin agreement where the deal with refugees is a matter for the whole European Union, the UK has to do this all on its own now and it's just been disastrous. So I really hope that as the Labour Party conference is coming soon they give a good spot to Neil Kinnock and actually listen to what he's saying."

Mr Wishart acknowledged Reform's success in current opinion polls and that the party had been successful in putting immgration issues on the map - but he said that was a result of people's feeling of "alienation" from politics in general.

He added: "It's easy to scapegoat others to blame for everything. The message that Reform and the far right will be trying to communicate is here's a very convenient group of people to blame."

Asked it using the term "far right" to encompass all who are concerned about immigration - and those who protest about asylum seekers being housed in hotels, he added: "I think that's a legitimate challenge. I mean, I'm the MP for Perth, we've had protests at a couple of hotels in the city where asylum seekers are being hosted.

"The point I try to make to my constituents is that, you know, people have legitimate concerns about immigration, and that's right, we're living in that democracy, it's a challenge of political ideas and if people believe that they want to have this addressed, they make their political choices.

"What's not right is coming to one of the hotels and howling "go home" and demand people are deported who've travelled 1000s and 1000s of miles to seek sanctuary, some of the most traumatised people you'd ever meet in the global community.

"So yes, people have genuine concerns about immigration. But they've been sold a set of fallacies by far right figures who tried to take advantage of that situation. I just ask them to be wary."

Reform has been asked for a response.