Nigel Farage said children would not be exempt from Reform UK’s proposed asylum deportations, according to the Guardian’s live account of Monday’s press conference.
The report says he argued that allowing children to stay could enable family reunification.
Earlier comments were more qualified
In August 2025, Farage gave a series of differing answers about how Reform would treat women and children under its deportation proposals.
ITV reported that he initially said women and children arriving illegally would be detained, while acknowledging that dealing with children was more complicated.
At a subsequent press conference, he said they were not part of the party’s plan for the next five years. He later clarified that families with children were not the priority and that the party would determine the appropriate approach when a woman arrived with children.
That history makes it important to distinguish an exemption from the timing or priority of removals. Today’s reported answer addresses whether children would be excluded; it does not provide a detailed process for returning them.
Wider five-year asylum proposal
Farage announced on Monday that Reform would suspend asylum grants for up to five years if it won power. Reuters reports that new claims would be rejected and failed applicants returned to their home countries or a safe third country.
The party also proposes closing legal asylum resettlement routes, with an exemption for Ukrainians who fled to Britain after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Reform’s existing published immigration policy calls for leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act and establishing a deportation command.
Implementation remains unresolved
These are opposition proposals, not changes to current law. The reported answer does not establish what arrangements would apply to unaccompanied children, who would receive them or what safeguarding assessments would be required.
The children-related remarks above are paraphrases attributed to live reporting, rather than quotations verified against a full official transcript.