By CLAIRE ELLCOTT
Reform UK will block visa requests from any country that demands reparations from the UK should they win the next election, the party announced yesterday.
Home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf claimed such nations ignore the ‘huge sacrifices’ the UK had made to ban slavery.
Several African and Caribbean countries – such as Nigeria and Jamaica – have made requests, raising the prospect that their nationals could be barred from entering the UK.
Mr Yusuf said: ‘A growing number of countries are demanding reparations from Britain. They ignore the fact that Britain made huge sacrifices to be the first major power to outlaw slavery and enforce this prohibition.
‘Astonishingly, of the countries demanding reparations, Tory and Labour governments issued 3.8million visas to their nationals and sent them a staggering £6.6billion in foreign aid over the past two decades. Enough is enough.’
Those making demands also include Kenya, Haiti, Guyana, Barbados and the Bahamas, Reform said. It added that if it won the next election, the party would immediately halt visas for nationals from any country that formally demands reparations from Britain.
Reform’s vow comes weeks after the UN voted in favour of Britain and other former colonial powers paying reparations for slavery – possibly totalling trillions of pounds.
Britain was one of 52 countries that abstained from voting for a resolution which described the forced displacement of Africans as the ‘gravest crime against humanity’.
The African Union, a bloc of 55 member states, is seeking compensation for the harms inflicted by the slave trade.
It argues that countries such as Britain should now begin ‘good faith dialogue on reparatory justice, including a full and formal apology, measures of restitution and compensation’.
In 2023, a UN judge said Britain – which controlled a quarter of Africa at the height of empire – could owe more than £18trillion.
Reform leader Nigel Farage last week told GB News: ‘It was a UN court that gave an advisory judgment to give away the Chagos Islands.
‘And it is now the UN telling us we should go bankrupt, to apologise for what people did in 1775 or whatever it might have been. Forget it. The UN has no legitimacy over this country whatsoever.’
Reform has also vowed to cap foreign aid payments to £1billion – a 90 per cent cut.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office said that while the UK acknowledged the ‘abhorrence’ of the slave trade: ‘The UK’s position on reparations is clear – we will not pay them.’
Sir Keir Starmer has previously ruled out an apology from the UK or the payment of reparations, saying he wanted to look at the future rather than ‘spend a lot of time on the past’.
Source: dailymail.co.uk