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Nigel Farage has been accused by the Church of England’s current most senior bishop of an “isolationist, short-term kneejerk” response to the small boats crisis.
Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said the Reform UK leader, who has promised mass deportations, was not offering a solution to the “big issues” driving people to risk the English Channel crossing.
The Reform UK leader has set out plans to remove up to 600,000 people from the country if he forms the next government.
The archbishop, the most senior figure in the Church of England in the absence of an archbishop of Canterbury, was asked for his response to people suggesting that arrivals in the UK would get locked up and deported straight away.
“I’d say to them: you haven’t solved the problem,” he told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
“You’ve just put it somewhere else and you’ve done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country.
“And so if you think that’s the answer, you will discover in due course that all you have done is made the problem worse.”
He said he had “every sympathy with those who find this difficult” but “we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short-term kneejerk ‘send them home’”.
Asked directly whether that was his message to Mr Farage, the archbishop said: “Well, it is. I mean, Mr Farage is saying the things he’s saying, but he is not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world, which lead to this.”
Last week, Mr Farage rowed back on plans to deport hundreds of thousands of people in the first five years of a Reform UK government, saying this would now not include women and children.
Asked during the unveiling of his plans if it would include those groups, Mr Farage said: “Yes, women and children, everybody on arrival, will be detained.”
However, on Wednesday he insisted to a press conference in Broxburn, West Lothian, that he had been “very, very clear” that the party was focused on “illegal males” and “not even discussing women and children at this stage”.
Reform’s plans, which would also see Mr Farage attempt to strike returns deals with Iran and Taliban-governed Afghanistan, have been attacked by refugee groups and some politicians.
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